


Matryoshka

by hegemony



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Bodyswap, Breathplay, Cunnilingus, F/M, Genderbending, Halloween, Identity Porn, Kink Negotiation, Mildly Dubious Consent, New Year's Eve, New York City, Off-screen Character Death, Orgasm Control, Pegging, Public Sex, Restraints, Rimming, Rope Bondage, Sex Pollen, Slow Build, Switching, Vaginal Fisting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:12:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegemony/pseuds/hegemony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds space inside herself for him. </p><p> <br/>Alternatively titled, <i>And Clint's Like 'Just Fuck Already!'</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Matryoshka

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Stephanometra and Yugimutos for always being there to listen to me throw things against the wall and see what sticks; my Natasha would not exist without both of you being patient, understanding, amazing people.

She doesn’t allow herself to be scared, even though she can hear feet slapping against industrial tile and concrete and coming closer, closer. She’s bleeding, choking, twitching because it’s the only way to force blood flow into dislocated limbs and fingers and broken toes. 

“Natasha?!” a voice echoes, “Natasha, are you there?” 

She can hear Rogers calling out orders and the pithy banter of Iron Man. There’s a fight on the other side of the corridor wall. 

She’s a spy, stupid men. She works better when left for dead.

The light flicks on, and she sees Bruce in his modified SHIELD uniform, the one he always wears after dehulking in places where he needs to be anonymous or serve as a field medic. 

“Natasha?” He’s breaking all the rules of the battle, calling her by name, openly expressing his worry. She looks like a trophy: a spectacular prisoner mired in fatigue and dying on display, naked on the hunter’s mantle. 

“I don’t need help,” she says, flatly. 

“Probably not,” he says, gently, “but after the day I bet you’ve had, don’t you think you deserve some?” 

She hates words like ‘deserve’. 

He pulls himself onto a lab table, lifts up onto his toes and lasers through the tubing that holds her in midair.

“It’s just scratches, doc.” 

He runs his hands over her dislocated shoulders and elbows and broken ribs, watching as she spits blood onto his shoes like it’s nothing. He makes a face, forces her shoulder back into the socket, and pulls out a shirt from his inside jacket pocket. 

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says as he helps her get it over her head. She curls into him when she finally feels the pins and needles of blood rushing back to all the places she couldn’t get them to and he radios for help. 

She lays her head in his lap, the rest of her body lax on the metal table. “I’m fine, you can go smash now. I know how much you hate that monkey suit.” 

“I’ll manage. I’d rather stay here with you until that lung gets proper attention. It’s not like I mind, or anything.” he shrugs, as if it explains everything. “What’s a little bondage between friends?” 

“Good thing we’re friends, I guess.” 

“Yeah,” He says, softly. “Good thing.” 

 

 

 

 

She hates Friday nights in New York City. It’s too wide and hollow when she’s not Widow. She thinks of all those lives going to waste, blithe crises of broken heels and traffic jams and just desserts for everyone. And even though all those stories are within her, they’re all painful to experience in real life, too. 

Bruce seems to relish them like he’s been deprived of something special. 

She turns, scowls. “Why did we come here again?” 

“Deserters hiding out in the middle of a battle field,” he remarks. 

“It’s not the Magnificent Seven, doc,” she says. 

“Yeah, guess not. Cowboys don’t go to sports bars,” The pub isn’t far from the tower, but it’s full of sports fans wearing their colors and nursing pints of beer with names they can’t pronounce. He swivels on his chair, chewing through a mouthful of fried haddock. “There’s also the issue of chaps. I can’t pull off chaps. I don’t know about you.” 

He breaks off another piece of fish, bathes it in lemon and vinegar and shoves it into his mouth. It would be disgusting to watch if she weren’t just as ravenous about her food after weeks of ramen and tomato soup and mandatory bed rest, everything she’s never wanted. 

She pauses, searches for the right words and tries not to lift the glass of Guinness in front of her until she gets it out. “Do you ever want to just…” 

“Run?” he asks. Her jaw settles. She nods at him. “No, not really.”

“Why?” 

“Don’t see why not. All the factors are on the table, from this position. This city doesn’t give a shit, I can do whatever I want.” He says. “So, I’m allowing myself to explore the things I missed. Giving myself a break.” 

“What were you doing before?” 

He smirks and turns to look at her. “Campaigning for sainthood.” 

Someone makes a touchdown on the screen behind them. Or a goal. Something like that. 

She steals a fry from his plate. 

 

 

 

 

Once everyone settled into the tower, Steve and Bruce petitioned Tony for a laundry room. Natasha watched the three of them bicker over it, if there should be machines and what kind and why would anyone possibly want to do their own laundry. In the end, the Avengers’ laundry room was as much an ode to Tony’s money as the rest of their rooms: concrete tubs and bamboo walls and sleek stainless steel machines. 

“I have a theory,” Bruce is standing at the sink, watching as it fills with water when she walks in. He’s drinking from a mug with an oversized fake diamond hanging off the handle, hugging his finger. 

“Nice ring,” She says, putting her basket down. “What’s your theory?” 

“Tony wanted to originally make this the Avengers spa,” he says. 

She walks over to flick her cabinet open, pulling out soap. “Because he wanted to replace ridiculous attempts at team dinner with team mani-pedis?” 

He flicks the faucet off, puts down his mug and rolls up his sleeves to put the divider in place. 

“If I were to make a Smirnov joke right now,” he says with bored, flat sarcasm, “it would be quite profound, wouldn’t it?” 

“Especially when you lost your tongue,” she replies, pours impoverished Soviet emphasis into each word. She watches as he silently throws his clothes into the water, careful to scrub at them in the soapy side of the basin. She mindlessly separates out her clothes, each lining of her new uniform from their leather and polymer exteriors. She sifts loose change from her jeans. 

“Anything to add, Nata?” he croons, his accent almost as good as hers. He could pass, she thinks, chalking it down to hidden talents. 

“Delicates,” she says. It’s linings and underwear, really. 

“Throw ‘em in before the water gets cold,” he says. “Unless…”

“I’ll wait,” she nods. 

“There’s tea, if you want,” he points out, squeezing the water from his clothing, adding them to the clean water on the other side. She reaches for the empty cup in the communal closet and says nothing when the handle is shaped like knuckle dusters, brassy-fake and peeling gold. She pours, drinks. 

“You always make good tea,” she smiles, and walks over to him as he scoops the last of his clothing from the soapy water. She stands next to him with her cup of tea in one hand and her underwear in a lacy cottony pile in the other. 

“Gimme a second,” he stammers. “I’ll get out of your way.” 

“Don’t do that,” she says as she sets her cup down next to his. “I could use the company.” 

“While you wash your panties.” 

“While I wash my kit,” she insists, rolling her underwear over in her hands under the water, squeezing the soap from it and dropping it in with his clothing on the other side of the basin. It floats along in the water next to a pair of his hulk-proof shorts. 

“So what brings you here to awkwardly wash your panties,” he starts. 

“ _Kit_ ,” she repeats.

“On a Friday evening?” he says. “I imagined you would be finding some trouble to get into. Take out some organized crime, maybe.” 

“I’m not Batman,” she replies, “and I made a promise to Fury I’d only clean house once a month.” 

“No date? Nothing that needs stealing?” 

“Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of performing tasks that do not require elements of spycraft,” she says, dropping a bra into his side of the basin. 

“Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have a date,” he shrugs. 

“Night’s still young,” she replies. “But I don’t really do that.” 

“That’s… interesting,” he says, diplomatically. 

“I’ve never been good at dating for fun,” she admits. “I can never be open with people about what might happen after.” 

“You mean the part where you turn their house into a level of Street Fighter?” 

She shoves him playfully as he squeezes his fingers through the last pair of his jeans, “Could you use the cabinet? I need the rack.” 

“I can tell,” he says, holding up one of her bras before letting it flop back into the water. He’s piling everything but the shorts and a sweater into the dryer, so it can fill the room with a mechanical hum. “So what happens after?” 

She smiles at that, at how he wants to hear, but doesn’t want to make it feel like she’s announcing it to anybody. It’s a token gesture if there ever was one and she can tell in his eyes that he feels bad that it’s all he can give. 

She looks down, shakes her head, “It’s nothing. I never get comfortable enough with someone to become able to enjoy things. And whenever I do, I’m not very hungry for old-fashioned. I like sex a lot, but…I like it more when I don’t get what I want.” 

“Denial,” he says, and turns to hang the sweater and his pants in the cabinet, reaching up to turn it on before closing the door. 

“I guess,” she continues. “Would you mind taking those out and hanging them up while I start on the bloody stuff?” 

“Why don’t I do the bloody stuff while you hang up your underwear?” he asks. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to be right now.” 

She watches him grab the first liner, filthy with soot and blood, and roll it deep into the water, wringing soap into stubborn stains. His hands are wide but delicate, and she smiles at him when he’s not looking.

 

 

 

 

By the time she’s back in the Tower on another Friday night, Alphabet City’s cool as the last dregs of summer are draining from the air. The place he takes her is quiet, pretentious until the drink in her hand warms her from the inside. 

“I didn’t expect you to understand,” she admits on their second round.

The drink in his hand is a cruel shade of fluorescent green, dancing back and forth in his glass. 

“It’s a little personal, admitting to a life of quiet desperation.” 

“I answered honestly. It seemed the right thing to do at the time,” she shrugs. 

“It wasn’t uncouth, just surprising. A compliment, to know you trust me with that,” he replies. “I like more denial than not, and when denial isn’t in the picture, control usually is.” 

“Control?” she asks him. She’s genuinely curious about this, turns to make sure she hears him over the sterile washed up melody of decade-old pop music. 

“Look, I’m not good at getting what I want. Unless what I want is to not get what I want, and then I’m really good at it,” he shakes his head and looks down at his glass. “This drink is terrible.” 

“It’s named after that time you ‘broke’ Harlem, as you so fondly like to say,” she says, flatly. “So what part of this are you good at, actually?” 

Maybe she’s shown her hand a little too quick.

“I like it when people tell me no,” He says, staring. “I’m also very good at telling other people no.” 

“It’s a big city,” she points out, and that’s not even factoring in Bruce’s compulsive need to move. She knows his type: he will never stop being a runner, even as he roots himself here. “You could always find a playmate, if you wanted one.” 

“Thanks for the suggestion.” 

“Maybe you don’t understand what I’m getting at, Bruce,” she leans in. Her fingers trace along his hand to the stem of his glass. She raises it to her lips, makes sure he’s watching as she takes a sip. “God, that _is_ terrible.” 

He stares at her for a moment before looking down, allowing himself to laugh. “I didn’t order it for you.” 

She knows a challenge when she hears it, swallowing the rest down and letting the glass sit again on the bar. “I’ll make you a proper green drink back at the Tower.”

He readjusts his glasses and shrugs. “I could probably use the walk.” 

 

 

 

 

They end up ambling toward Times Square. The neon lights shine for blocks as they walk in companionable silence. 

Bruce hails a cab. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever win you over after I decided to stay in New York,” he says. 

It’s true. Natasha had considered it a very bad idea. There are times where she can’t explain him, how he’s capable of such horror and compassion. But he’s shown so much emotion, in the last few months, reserved and scared and so endlessly composed. Living selfishly has done well by him. 

“I was wrong.” 

“Eloquent,” he murmurs sarcastically.

“If we’re both in the business of denying ourselves and others, it seems logical for us to try it together as long as we respect each other’s boundaries,” she says. “An experiment. Isn’t that what scientists do?” 

“Fuckin’ science,” he sighs for a second, and he looks like he’s on the verge of taking a vow of silence. Instead, he sits up straight and looks at her. “Fine. Boundary one: we don’t talk about this anymore until we’re sober.” 

She nods firmly, “shake on it.” 

He sticks his hand out and she matches him, even pressure all the way down to her fingertips. And their faces are so decadently, unnervingly close that it’s just a matter of--

 

 

 

 

“It’s not how you think,” she tells Clint the next morning, her jaw stiff and her eyes locked. 

She’s not above an inward smile as he demands details.

 

 

 

 

His feet sprawl out in two different directions. He cowers into the little hutch they’re sitting against, and in that moment there are so many words, genuine words she could say to him, all on the tip of her tongue. 

It’s windy up here, a little cold. She cowers into her sweater, tucks hair behind her ear. She looks at him and tries to show some moxy.

“Look, doc. I was way out of line on Friday, I know it can’t be easy finding what you want,” she says. 

“Perhaps I’ve undersold how much I’d enjoy your company, Natasha. Tension, Miss Romanov.” 

“It’s Romanova, if you’re going to use it like that,” she says. 

“Tension, Miss _Romanova_ , that’s really what I want.” He corrects, rolls the name she hates so much around in his mouth like candy. “I don’t much like pretending. I want you to be you.” 

“Do you want me to be the ‘you’ you know or the ‘you’ I am?” 

“Is there much difference between the two?” he returns. She hesitates. “Tell me what you want.” 

“I don’t like pain and telling me I’m a whore won’t get me off. I’ve had more than enough foolish men who got their kicks from seeing the Black Widow slapped around, it sickens me. Don’t insinuate I’ll obey or you’ll throw me off the balcony. I don’t eroticize hollow threats. I’ve been broken enough times to know I can’t be fixed with obedience.” 

Bruce stares at her, “what do you eroticize?”

She raises her eyes, “it depends.” 

“On?” 

“You know what I am,” she says. 

“Sure, but I bet you have favorites,” he says. “I like predicaments. I like it when sensations that are supposed to be meaningful become so hollow they’re unsatisfactory. I like the sting of choosing to not take pleasure when it’s offered. When I can’t come.” 

“Can you?” She asks. “Come? Without turning green?” 

“Tony told everyone that when I turned down mutual masturbation in the name of science,” he sighs. “The other guy tends to settle while I’m, uh, post-coital. I just have a lot of triggers when it comes to titles and whips and headgames, and too-fast-too-showy stuff like that. Even handcuffs are a stretch, most days.”

She thinks for a moment. “I like being kept, I guess. When I’m hemmed in, or when I don’t allow myself something, it’s like all the walls in my head to keep stories straight fall away. I reprioritize.” 

“In general or sexually?” he asks. 

“Sex is just another generality, isn’t it?” She replies. “I like the sensation of being tied down more than I like the restraint.” 

“You’re a sensualist,” he says, fondly. “I wouldn’t have expected that.” 

 

 

 

 

She can hear the sound of Bruce writing in a paper notebook, imagines how much Tony must hate that. 

He walks over to the little nook of a break room, washes his hands in the sink. He ignores her as he reaches for the door of the fridge tucked under the cabinet, pulling out an orange, sitting on the couch. 

Natasha knows what she looks like, naked from the waist down with her hands raised high above her head, tied the pillar facing the couch in his lab. Right in the middle of her there’s a piece of solid wood, sanded and polished and angled to fit between her thighs, to dig into her crotch. She can feel her weight collapsing, sagging down until there’s constant, blinding pressure in the center of her.

“How’s it hangin’?” he asks, finally. 

Her mouth bends into a smile at the pun. “Never been better, comparatively speaking.” 

“Oh yeah?” he asks, unpeeling the rind of the orange in an elegant stripe. “Compared to…” 

“How excruciating it must have been for you to go about your work knowing I was here,” she says, careful words chosen with careful purpose. “Tied up for you.” 

“You weren’t tied up for me, if the way you were ordering me around while we got you situated was any proof,” he chuckles, “ but I would be lying if I didn’t say it was a little distracting.” 

Her arms are tired, and it shows. 

“Where are my manners,” he says to himself as he raises the other half of the orange to her. “Want some?” 

“Little tied up at the moment,” she says. He chuckles. “Feed it to me?” 

She doesn’t open her mouth until he’s holding up a piece for her. She takes it into her mouth, lets her lips close around his fingertips with a moan for showmanship. 

When they’ve finished, his fingertips trace her lips. She opens her mouth and lets her tongue caress them, tasting essential oil and soap. After his fingers are sufficiently warm and wet, he slides them away and replaces them with his mouth. 

He pushes his fingers neatly against her clit. She leans into his mouth, his touch, even as the pain of discomfort cuts through her. Her hands curl into fists and she hates herself for asking for this, because all she wants to do is touch and take and have. 

“Bruce.” 

“You aren’t being genuine, Miss Romanova,” he whispers, almost disappointed. She can hear a shade of dominance in his voice and shivers. He slides his fingers a little further between her legs, teasing at her. She balances on his hand, on the horse, body begging for the breach. “I could change that.” 

“I’d like to see you try,” she says.

“When’s the last time you came, Natasha?” He tilts his hand, her clit mashed into his palm. “How long has it been?”

“Months,” she sighs. 

“You could give in,” he tempts. “I wouldn’t fault you for giving in.” 

She hides herself from him, nails sinking into the palms of her hands and she trembles, knowing she’s on the very edge. 

“Last chance,” he singsongs. “Before I ruin it.” 

She knows he can’t see the way her stomach’s clenching but she feels his free hand stroke her thigh anyway, like he’s trying to soothe her, manage her. And he rubs against her just right but in the wrong place, all the pressure she needed seconds ago just above her clit. She yanks at her ropes and looks down at his hands and moans with frustration. 

“You’re okay,” he assures, pulling his hand away to reach for the knife. 

 

 

 

 

Friday night in the City is a villain that doubles back for them too soon. There’s too much traffic and she curses herself: they should have taken the train. 

“You fit into me, like a hook into an eye,” he says aloud. She knows it’s Tony’s after-dinner whiskey talking. 

“Poetry, man? Really?” the cabbie asks in English tinted with shades of Arabic they both can hear, looking at the two of them in his rear view mirror. “I bet the lady has no time for poetry.” 

“A fish hook,” Bruce says, softly. His head leans down, he laughs at himself. “An open eye.”

“Margret Atwood.” She says aloud.

“I saw you reading _A Handmaiden’s Tale_ a few days ago,” he says. “I’d wondered where I’d left it.” 

“I’m impressed,” she smiles. She’s burrowed into her coat, but she reaches her hand out and loops a finger around one of his. “But you don’t want that.” 

“No,” he admits gently. She wonders which one of them is the hook. 

When they get out, the cabbie says to her, “tell Cassanova to try harder next time, yes?” 

She smiles, and lets herself tip a little better than she normally would. 

 

 

 

 

Time is not kind to them. Between her missions, the time it takes her carefully constructed masks to peel, and the latest catastrophe, he runs off for a conference and stretches it into a lecture series in Budapest, Shanghai, and Adelaide.

They don’t get to spend much time thinking of each other. 

“Tell me a secret,” he requests, a wavy sleepy smile on his face. He opens the blanket that wrapped around him as she walks up, finally out of the suit. 

“Just one?” she asks. She controls her voice, coasting on the adrenaline and guilt of watching destruction they could have stopped. He wraps his arm, the blanket around her, and she allows herself to get comfortable. 

“Asking for more would be selfish,” he says. 

She rolls over and leads his hand against the back of a thigh. “Cane scars. I don’t trust the memory. I don’t trust any of my memories from back then, not anymore.” 

The planes of his face darken, even though he can’t see anything under the blanket. 

“Natasha,” he says, “I…” 

She changes the subject. “Y’know, every time we’ve kissed you’ve avoided my hair. I want you to put your hands in it, next time. Pull it, if you want.” 

“I didn’t think we were talking about that,” he says, quietly. 

Time stretches between them again, She curls up against him, the warmth of him a welcome reprieve. 

“I was professional, once.” He says, softly. 

“That explains a few things.” She says. Clint was professional once, too, but that’s not her story to tell. “Doesn’t seem like a good line of work for a man with your skills.” 

“It wasn’t, but you’d be surprised how many people enjoy recreational scolding,” he replies. “It was good practice, seeing how people ask to get hurt.”

She doesn’t answer: there’s no need. Berlin’s on fire because they didn’t respond quick enough to that Doomte--

“Could I be yours, tomorrow?” he asks. 

 

 

 

 

Bruce has never seen Natalie before. There’s never been a need for Natalie: no call for the garters and Cuban stockings, the slinky too-tight dresses, the China red soles of her Louboutins. Bruce has never seen the bow of Natasha’s mouth covered in the violent scarlet of Natalie’s lipstick. There has never been a reason to put it on display, before. 

“Should I be scared of you?” she asks, standing behind him. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” he replies as she reveals herself to him. He fidgets and wiggles. Her knots hold his wrists tight behind his back. “Jesus.” 

None of his pulling or struggling loosens her work. They agreed her ropes should hold fast, so she can take advantage of him, dangle herself in front of him as the brilliant thing he cannot have. 

“The feeling’s mutual, Doctor,” she smiles, coyly. 

“Oh, this old thing?” he preens, looking down at his bound-too-tight waist, roped back shoulders and black cotton hiding his torso, his pecs, his heart. 

“I find it very,” she hesitates as she kneels next to him, caresses his bondage like it’s his skin. She stays just out of his reach, her breath so close. He shivers, rolls his hands behind his back again, “very sexy. And I want to touch you, but I’m worried about your heart.”

“My heart?” he asks. 

“Well, I’m sure you’re close,” she oozes sexuality like this, biting her lip and crawling closer. She feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, rolling over and playing submissive. Natalie’s not submissive, she never has been. 

“Impressively close,” he replies as the rope around his neck slowly crawls up as he leans forward. 

She uncurls a hand to give him the barest of a reprieve: a long red fingernail tracing the curl of his jaw. He closes his eyes, trembling against her touch. She veers in until his choked off breath falls on her collarbone. Her finger traces down his chest, his stomach, down the line of his erection, his scrotum, the rimming toy he’s balanced upon. She reaches for the control dial, cranks it a little higher, reaches forward to turn the vibrating ring on its first setting. Bruce collapses into her, resting his head on her shoulder. 

“God,” he gasps as she slinks just out of his reach, splaying her legs out and opening her thighs, running her fingers over the high hemline of her skirt. She peels the hemline back, revealing herself naked to him underneath. She looks at him through lowered eyelashes like she’s asking for his approval, and traces the lace hooks of her garter belt. “God, yes.” 

“What would you like me to do?” she asks him. The same fingernail she’d used all over him traces down over the swell of her cunt, pressing against the bead of her clit. 

“I,” he pauses, presses his lips together to think. “I want to see you.” 

She smiles, and rolls up onto her knees, rolls over and ruches the fabric of her dress up her back, closing a hand between her legs to stroke herself in a long, slow caress. She wonders what this looks like to him, the swell of her ass and cunt, the wrist gyrating between closed thighs, the perspective lines of Cuban stockings, the angles of shoes as they curl and point in different directions. She wonders if he’d be able to describe it, to draw it if she asked. 

When she turns to look at him, he’s straining against the rope around his neck. He needs to reach out and take her into his mouth, taste this part of her. 

“When I get myself out of this I’ll…” he starts. 

“Now Bruce, you tried that once,” she says, voice cracking on the first wave of pleasure. “For a minute you looked like you were going to be very good at crushing me, but you failed.” 

“You’re so fucking wet,” he groans. 

“Oh, I always get this way,” she teases, remembering a time when Natalie was a lot naughtier. 

She rolls back against him, _grinds_ down upon him, dragging along his shaft. She can feel the low pulsing vibration traveling against his skin. She hears his moan from oversensitivity and unending arousal. Her ass rolls up against the rope she used to bind his waist, and she drags her clit against that, too. She lifts her backside to eye-level, lets him watch her convulse and clench and come, so close he could taste it if only he didn’t need the air between them. 

And he makes his decision, leans down and cuts all of his air off to breathe her, instead. 

She almost hates him; Natalie certainly does. Still, she lets him have his moment, knows the predicament is what gets him off the most. And then, she pulls herself away from him, uses her heel to push him back into position, the rope’s grip on his throat receding. 

She leaves him bound at the waist and his legs, after he’s had his fun. 

“May I kiss you?” he asks, shakily. 

She doesn’t reply, kissing the taste of herself off his lips. She plays with his hair in one hand, slides her fingers in merciless tease against the head of his cock in the other. He shivers and tries to angle himself into her hand but she’s illusive and he can never get it right. She stops and pulls her hand away. She slides his head to her shoulder, shivering and holding onto whatever he has. 

She starts again, rolls a finger slowly up his cock, watching him crumple against her. He shakes and his hips shove half-thrusts toward her. 

“I’ll work you up to this again. So I can put you in here,” she says, taking his hand from her cheek to press it against her pussy. “My own human vibrator.” 

“You’re so wet,” he groans as she pushes his fingers forward until she’s in the palm of his hand. 

She falls into his fantasy effortlessly, “And tight, wouldn’t you like to come in? Or maybe back here is your thing.” 

She pushes even further against his palm. 

“You wouldn’t.” 

“You would just have to work hard for it.” She singsongs, “Months of kneeling, impeccable service. Loyalty and chastity.” 

He moves his hand away, a gentleman. Pity, she would have enjoyed seeing him react to the way she could suck at his fingertips because there’s no part of her that doesn’t keep in shape. She’ll have to settle for the way his hands clench on her thighs as she draws little circles on his crown, running her fingers down the seam of his scrotum, skitters of sensation everywhere. 

“You could ask me,” she says, and they both know what she means. 

“I could,” He replies, “but where would the fun be in that?” 

She keeps him on the edge for hours, leaning into her, desperate and powerless, making him watch as she strokes herself into another breathless shivering stab of pleasure meant to question his self control.

Later, when she’s wrapped him up in blankets instead of rope, he turns to her, asks. “Do I make myself painfully obvious?” 

“About what?” 

“Butts, I guess,” he shrugs. 

“No, not really,” she says, tries not to laugh. “But Maria saw you checking hers out pretty early on.” 

He sighs, blushes a hilarious shade of pink, “Remind me to apologize. Flowers, maybe.” 

She slides closer to him. Closer still. 

 

 

 

 

“Which one of you is the spider?” Clint asks as they fly the jet. 

“That’s the best you can come up with?” she turns. “Why do I tell you anything?” 

“Well, Maria’s out of the question, so I figured it’s either gonna be me or Potts. And the last thing you want is for Stark to end up making smash-proof rope for your sexless psychotherapy sessions.” 

Natasha grits her teeth. 

 

 

 

 

The fog hadn’t hit Bruce until he was awake again, until he was up on his feet and squared away in his quarters for the night. 

Banner’s apartment in Stark Tower is a love letter from one anxious genius to another. It’s a bungalow in Mombasa, Islamabad, Bat-Yam. The walls are painted like sand. Stark made adamantium furniture and hutches to line ropey corridors, and then spent days painting them up like wood. 

Bruce’s place is always lit like a cloudless day on the Black Sea, and Natasha isn’t sure if the kitchen was pulled directly out of an abandoned Saudi mcmansion or if Stark just designed it to look that way. 

However, the hulk proof room is classic Tony: sleek Italian furniture stretched three sizes too big, walnut-colored bouncy walls and Banner-sized medical restraints. Bruce is on the bed in the far side of the room, in a long shirt and a pair of boxer briefs. He’s breathing slowly, deliberately, testing the straps like the way he did when they were together. 

“Tony ran tests,” Clint tells her. He’s sitting on Banner’s distressed leather couch, watching the display through the glass that separates the room from Banner’s living room, looking like he could use some popcorn as he settles in. “Nothing contagious. More like a frequency tuner. All the Gamma is… doing something weird, like Pon Farr weird.” 

“And you think now’s the appropriate time for a Spock reference?” she asks. She’s got her bag of tricks and she’s strong-armed everyone but Clint from the room and now she’s glaring at him to leave. To leave this be. 

He stands, shrugs, “If the shoe fits, right?” 

“Sure,” she murmurs. She doesn’t acknowledge when he leaves. Instead, she walks to the window, puts her head against the glass. She watches Bruce mindlessly twist and shiver, his body rolling in the restraints. If he weren’t so focused on his own pleasure, he’d look trapped, frightened.

She thought she might have some fun with this, but there’s nothing fun about it. 

 

 

 

 

“No, Natasha.” 

“The others believed I was the best candidate for this job,” and it’s true. 

“I’d find that appropriately zany if it weren’t so sexist,” he jokes. He leans back, rolls his hips like he’s stroking himself off in his underwear. Her back’s turned to him, but she watches in the glass as his thighs spread wider, like they need more leverage. “It will screw everything up.” 

“Everything,” she repeats. 

His voice warbles with arousal, “us, the things we offer each other. It won’t work without trust. And I won’t be able to trust myself after this.” 

“You’re right.” 

“I know I’m goddamn right,” he says. “It’s hideous, what’s happening inside me right now.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“I wouldn’t take care of you like this. I wouldn’t give you what you deserve,” he groans. 

There’s that word again. She looks over her shoulder, feels the anger building a fire in her chest.

“What’s that, Bruce?” She asks. “Flowers? _Poetry_? You’ve never gone out of your way to be chivalrous to me.” 

“Natasha,” He says, “You deserve my self control and respec—“ 

Her voice shakes as she turns and leans into the trunk of his restrained body, “It’s called ‘permission,’ Doctor. If I want you to control yourself, I will make you.” 

He opens his mouth wide, worried red and abused and he rubs his chest against hers, lifts his hips to drag his erection against the front of her jeans. “I feel like a predator, Natasha.” 

She puts her hand on his throat casually, and tightens, tightens her grip, and takes the time to enunciate every word. “You don’t even know what real predators look like. You wouldn’t be able to breathe against me nevertheless tie me up without my permission.” 

“God, this shouldn’t be so hot,” he chokes, like he’s her damsel in distress, his hardness brushing her stomach, his hands jerking in his restraints. 

“I will get you through this,” she says. “You can sort your kinks later.” 

He heaves for air when she lets go, “We can’t fuck, I’m telling you. I can’t ruin us!” 

She backs away from him, looks with new eyes. 

He’s trembling, but not from arousal. 

“I brought something,” she says, understanding now. “It might help.” 

He tugs weakly again, “Natasha, please.” 

“My strap-on,” she says. “I know we haven’t ever talked about penetration and it’s sizable, so we’ll have our work cut out for us, but it’s a solution.” 

“You want…” He presses his lips together and looks away like he’s trying to sort it out in his head. “You wanna fuck me?” 

She reaches up, pushes his hair off his face, “is that off the table?” 

“Actually,” he looks back at her, almost surprised with himself, “you should probably lead with that, next time.” 

 

 

 

 

“You kept your jeans on?” Clint asks. 

“It was either that or introducing him to Natan,” she says. “He isn’t ready for Natan.” 

Clint gets that look again, the one that says he hates how she talks about herself sometimes, like her aliases are all independent from her. They’re not, but most days she likes the separation. 

“You fucked him out of chemically induced hysteria with your jeans still on, I’m sure he’ll be able to handle your male alter ego,” Clint snaps. Two women sitting a few tables away from them gasp, and Clint looks over at them like he wants to tell them off for eavesdropping. “So you got a new assignment. Have you told him?” 

“Is that something I need to do?” she asks. 

“Jesus,” he hisses. “Can the two of you just admit that you’re completely incapable of sane human interaction?” 

“Says the pot to the kettle.” 

“At least this pot knows his relationships are fucked up, and communicates accordingly,” he says. “It sounds like you’re still trying to act like a good girl, Nat.” 

She shrugs. “That’s a relative term.” 

 

 

 

 

Bruce flicks his legs out of one pose and onto his knees, rolling backward. His hands reach out behind him, find his feet and he drops his head just so, until he’s walking his hands up the backs of his calves, stretching the skin of his stomach thin, lowering his hips and gazing out between sprawled thighs. His body hair looks like it’s painted on, dark brown against tan skin. He sucks in the skin of his exposed stomach until Natasha can see the curve of his ribs. 

She closes her eyes and exhales, knows she’s given herself away. He’s up on his knees when she opens them again. 

“Enjoy the show?” Bruce asks. 

“What does that feel like?” 

“Like being reckless,” Bruce says. “There’s a little serenity to it.” 

She makes a noise at that. 

“I’m leaving tomorrow.” 

“The life of a spy,” Bruce says wistfully, “all gadgets and martinis and slight of hand.” 

“I’m not James Bond,” she says. 

“James Bond would say that,” he points out. 

“You genuinely have little clue of what I do when working?” 

He gets up from the mat and walks up to her. “Forgive me for preferring to keep it that way.” 

“After yesterday I just thought,” she struggles. 

He flicks a finger underneath her chin, kisses her gently. She places her hands on his arms, the swell of his biceps, tacky-wet with sweat. “You’re very good at the things you do, Nata.”

“I don’t need your affirmation,” she says. 

“And you don’t need to think you’re accountable to me because of whatever we’re turning into,” he replies. “That’s not who we are.” 

She frowns. 

“You could promise me one thing, though,” he continues, curling into her, his body so close. 

“What?” she asks

His mouth lowers to her ear, the heat of him everywhere. “Don’t come until we see each other again.” 

She stares at him, and can’t control the words coming out of her mouth, “Only if you do it too.” 

 

 

 

 

She feels on fire, replaying the events back in her head, feeling the ghost of Bruce’s legs twisted around her small waist, his hands so desperate to touch even while tied down. 

He was quiet while she fucked him. 

She realizes it now: she’d given of herself where he’d expected she’d take. In return, she saw his surrender, the shine of loyalty in his eyes. She’d gorged on it, and worked him over proper. He’d been so well behaved even as he shivered against her. As he finally came, he relished each ounce of pleasure as the fever burned him alive. 

He looked worn down and mindless after, relishing her idle touches and the trace of her pleased lips on his forehead. She’d indulged, stayed by his side in the too big bed until his fever swelled again. The condom had already been disposed of, but the toy was still body warm and lube-wet. And to all her sense, she’d straddled him, angled her hips down and presented it for service. She watched as he eased his mouth against her, eclipsing it, fucking himself through the impulse to choke. 

“Slower,” she’d said, she says now. “It’s not going anywhere.” 

Even though she knows its mean, she reaches down and touches herself. She imagines him watching her from the other side of this rathole. He’d sit against the peeling white wall, legs spread open as he jacked himself off to her pace, pressed his other lower to tease at a finger slipping inside him. 

Maybe they’d fuck, eventually. Horizontal, face to face, naked skin rubbing, hips rolling and springs creaking out a song of ‘Jesus, finally.’ They’d let each other see it, past the illusion of control and into the reality of just how broken they are. 

She places her hands back down into the sheets, and tries not to think of how he likes to will his orgasms away when he’s alone. 

It’s still too hot to sleep. 

 

 

 

 

Another Friday night, and she can see it in his eyes, as they hold her gaze across Stark’s dining room table.

“You’re the best to me,” he whispers in the back of the taxi this time. 

 

 

 

 

“You really should just fuck him, already,” Clint tells her. “This shit sounds awkward.” 

 

 

 

 

“Darcy and I made a deal,” Bruce mutters, putting his hands into his pockets on the subway platform. “She could come into work in costume if she helped me figure out what to wear tonight.” 

Darcy asked what Natasha was being for Halloween a few days ago-- like this was a date. Natasha told her she wasn’t very keen on dating or Halloween in general. Now, Bruce looks ridiculous, hair straightened and sculpted into a salt and pepper quiff, wearing a black turtleneck, skinny jeans and a letterman jacket with a little upside down cross on his chest.

“Undead hipster Morissey was the best the two of you could come up with?” she asks, crossing her arms. 

He laughs, looking down at her dress, her leggings and docs, blood red hair rolled up atop her head and garnished with dip-dyed black flowers bought from the bodega across the street from the SHIELD building near the bowery. She’s wearing makeup so heavy she’s sort of wondering if anyone will get the point of her raccoon eyes and black and red lips. 

“I’m sure you’ve been mistaken for Shirley Manson a few times today,” he returns. “Ready for some Argento?” 

“If _Suspira_ isn’t good, Banner,” she warns. “There will be hell to pay.” 

“Hell to pay, huh?” he asks as the train finally rolls in. “Can it at least be sexy hell?” 

“No such thing, really,” she replies. They enter the car to find a gaggle of Black Widows standing in the back, polyester wigs the wrong shade of red and rayon cat suits imitating the uniform she wore during the Battle of New York. She sits down, leers. “I don’t understand this holiday.” 

“Nobody does, really,” Bruce says, pushing a hand into his jacket and pulling out a round of imported Mexican chocolate, spiced with roasted chilies. “That said, trick or treat.” 

He pushes back the wrapper, snaps the chocolate in half, and pushes one into her hand. She allows herself a nibble even though she hasn’t had much to eat today. 

“They’re wearing the wrong shoes,” she mutters, flicking a finger to the troupe of imposters, wearing identical stiletto heels with off-color red soles. 

College girls, she thinks, maybe a sorority. A few of them are talking about a party down by the docks, a drunken re-enactment of the Battle. She imagines legions of women dressed as her, or Loki, or Tony if they’re willing to risk a raised eyebrow or two. 

“None of them look as good as you, either” he adds. 

“Everybody looks good in a catsuit, Banner,” she says. 

“Wouldn’t be saying that if I had one on.” 

There’s a small child curled up with her dozing mother on the other side of the aisle, dressed up like a tiny Hulk, kinky curly puffs of hair in pigtails on either side of her mask. She’s wearing a homemade foam-core suit, lines of black ink outlining each muscle of Hulk’s chest and stomach, little purple shorts and dark green leggings, purple mary-janes dangling in mid-air. 

“Rawr!” the girl says when she sees Bruce watching, brownish pink palms and tiny fingers curled into adorable claws that show off sickly green nail polish. She simpers with quiet laughter, coasting on a sugar high. 

“Roar,” he smiles back at her, quietly.

The train stops, and they stand for the transfer. They walk hand in hand through the station, the moment overwrought with silent emotion. 

“I saw someone else who was dressed like the other guy today,” he says. “It was decidedly less cute.” 

“Did you roar at them, too?” she asks. 

“Tripped ‘em, actually,” he says. 

“Careful,” she smiles, “your self-hatred’s showing.” 

A group of 30 or so men dressed like various stages of the Hulk arrive on the next train, sporting dedicated costumes of artfully tattered Stark-priced clothing and pale green flushes against naked skin. A little older than the Widows, she thinks: Trustifarian postgrads and silver-spooned seniors. 

Cruelty is her currency so she has endeavored to understand it, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t revere how it can rise within so many all at once.

Her mouth tilts down in movements no one else can see, and she disappears inside herself. Bruce sighs, stuffs his hands in his pockets and puts his head down as he pushes past the group to enter as they exit. She hangs back, lets herself get swept up in their current, pushes against as many of them as she can, hushed apologies and a hand barely grazing across them all. 

“Thought you weren’t gonna make it,” he says as she skips in, slipping between closing doors. He looks younger, sprawled out in front of her, his arms spread open to surround the backs of empty seats. He’s taken his glasses off, like maybe he’s given up seeing for a while. She doesn’t blame him, she would too if she saw a representation of every time she’d been unmade pregaming in the New York subway system on a Wednesday night. 

“What if we go to that place in Williamsburg? The one with the Japanese beer and the art school drop outs?” 

“Kinfolk?” he asks. “Last time Thor and I went there we burnt a hole so deep in the petty cash account I’m surprised Pepper didn’t cut up my Stark Card when we got home.” 

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” she says, as she opens her bag to him mischievously. He reaches for his glasses and peers inside. Wallets: every shape and size, some of them accidentally green from spray painted skin. 

“Did you seriously get every one of them?” he asks. She doesn’t even have to nod. “That’s… the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me, in a ‘cat bringing me dead mice’ kind of way.” 

“They deserved it.” She smirks, flicking her purse back over her shoulder. “Got any more of that chocolate?” 

“It’s like you don’t even try to be normal sometimes,” he says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. 

Yeah, okay. It’s a date. 

 

 

 

 

“Make me like you, Nata.” 

So she pushes him into the movie theatre bathroom, and locks the door behind them. She rips his jacket off, pulls out her makeup. 

The finishing cream’s iridescent white, and she rolls it over each of his cheeks, watches as his 5 o’clock disappears. She paints his mouth, wet matte red against chapped kiss-swollen lips. She lines his eyes with careful, thoughtful swipes of kohl and flicks open the cream shadow, tracing his lids. He leans into her, hands on the backs of her thighs, idle fingers tracing her scars. 

His face doesn’t contour the way hers does. He looks hungry, but alive.

She can feel his erection between them. And she opens his too-tight jeans, pulls back his hulk proofs and blows cool air over the tip of his cock, such simple action driving him to the brink. 

“Oh, Bruce. I would’ve sucked you off,” she whimpers, all show, “but I don’t think that was one of Argento’s best.” 

He laughs, reaches down and kisses her like he wouldn’t have enjoyed the orgasm anyway.

There are roses in the theatre atrium, some of them so young they haven’t blossomed yet. She looks through them, finds the reddest bud and plucks it from the vase. She snaps the stem off, reaches in her hair for an errant pin, and then reaches for him. It’s perfect, blood red at his throat like he’s been stabbed, the just opened flower a trick of the eye, a flawlessly gaping wound. 

She looks at the two of them in the taxi rear view mirror, haunting and gaunt and lithe. 

“Give girl scout the day off tomorrow?” she asks. 

“Did it on the train, actually,” Bruce says. “She said not to do anything she wouldn’t do.” 

Later, he puts a careful, possessive hand around her waist as they descend into the melee that is the subway station after the bars have stopped serving. They float, ghostly and stoic.

Natasha is often in the business of making heads turn in whichever direction she desires. The back of her dress is on display, oxblood and bone white trim, like her back has had the skin ripped away, exposing the lines of her ribs and the curve of her pelvis as it tilts back into his hand when he reaches down to cop a feel. 

She pushes back into his hand, pushes a kiss into his neck, smiling against his skin as he moans. 

Onlookers watch their tableau, and she takes pride in the story their bodies tell together. 

 

 

 

 

She admires him from across the room, polished in some places and rumpled in others, standing in a suit he couldn’t even afford six months ago. She looks at how it fits him, hugs the planes of his body, his shoulders and inner thighs encased in wool. 

She looks down at his shoes and tries not to feel the urge to drag her tongue against the leather. 

He’s smiling at her, staring. “You look beautiful, Natasha. And you make me feel like an old man.” 

She can feel herself blush, and she plays with her clutch, mouth blossoming in a swell of language only her mother tongue could provide. “No older than I Iike, Sir.”

“No need for formality,” he replies in Russian. She’s startled by how strong he sounds, powerful. “You may have my name.” 

She smiles, lowers her eyes. “You’ve never told it to me before.” 

“Nata,” he warns. “It’s not the time for games.” 

She nods, and assumes the position with elegant posture before he has the chance to say no. The wooden floor is a little hard, but nothing she cannot endure for him.

“Natasha,” he says, bending his mouth around her name like it’s the finest sound in his world. “Take your hair down.” 

The clips that hold the hairstyle she’d spent so much time on fall to the ground one by one. 

“Please,” She tries not to meet his eyes as he walks up to her, running the fingers of a powerful hand through her hair, grabbing a handful to pull as hard as he can. 

She blossoms for him, her head rolling back into the palm of his hand, moaning. 

“Put your hands behind your back.” She does as told. 

He picks her clutch off the floor, flicks it open. There’s a remote in there, smooth white and small in his hand. 

“And what do we have here?” he asks. He presses the first button, watching as her body stiffens with her arms behind her back, closing her eyes, shuttering from the bullet in each hole. “You were expecting to provoke me tonight.” 

“I…” 

“Spit it out,” he goads. 

“I wanted to get punished,” she answers. 

“Punished,” he rolls the word around in his mouth. “And you’re normally so well behaved.” 

“Please, sir.” 

“Stand.” 

He stands behind her, flicks his tie from his collar. He rolls the silk against her eyes, taking her vision, wrapping his arms around her middle. The vibrator turns on again, a high pulse that makes her breath hitch. 

“I haven’t been taking care of you, have I?” he asks as his hand skims the lace pattern of her dress. His voice lowers to a whisper. “I haven’t let you know which one of us is in charge, yes?” 

He lays kisses at her neck, her jaw, breathes in the smell of her hair. He runs his fingers over her arms, held behind her back. He sounds disappointed, but it’s a trick question. She doesn’t answer, her heart in her throat. 

He dances them somewhere and stops, then dances them over somewhere else. She doesn’t care: she’d follow him anywhere. 

The opera seems like a distant memory. 

The dress unzips, reveals the curves of her body to him, and she stands there, almost naked. She’s pushed to a platform, soft. A bed. 

“Lie back. Let me take care of you now.” 

She’s being appraised. She hates him for this, loves him, doesn’t know how she ever lived without him to bring clarity to the center of her darkness. 

She aches in her center as he straps her down tight. The padlocks click shut, her heart beating faster with every one. He owns her without trying. 

She’s in for a lesson tonight. 

“Thank you, sir.” 

 

 

 

 

She’s in scraps of underwear, a sheet draped over her. She looks toward the window, sees her dress laying over the back of Banner’s couch. 

The containment door swings open. Bruce leans against the sill. 

“You got dosed,” he says, like he’s breaking the bad news to a dame in one of Steve’s movies. “Think hard, Nata. What have you done differently in the last few days?”

She can’t think hard, but she looks up at him, presses her lips together. “Bought some new perfume on the last mission. Thought it’d be nice to wear tonight.” 

“Well, it was more of that neurotoxin we all seem to be catching around here.” 

“What did I do?” she asks. 

“You went all ‘Story of O’ on me. You thought I owned you.”

She frowns, “If you make ‘in Soviet Russia’ jokes about this, I will…” 

“You could try, but I’m not above putting you back on lockdown.” 

“How long have I been in here?” 

“10 hours,” he replies. “Only you, me and JARVIS know this happened.” 

“And my tickets?” 

“Gave ‘em to Darcy. Girl scout could probably use some culture,” he says. “I’ll find a way to repay you. Although technically most of my salary goes to the clinic network Pepper and I spent all that time setting up, so you’ll have to settle with foot rubs.”

“That’s a working girl’s opera itself, doc,” she says. She tries to wiggle against the belts. They don’t budge. 

“I know you’re not above dislocating your limbs if you think you can get out. Terrible practice, by the way.” 

“If I could move my hand I’d flip you off.” 

“You forgot the English language and all sense of free will for about eleven hours. There are bigger fish that could likely use frying.” 

“I forgot English?” 

“Natasha, you didn’t even know my name.” 

She deflates just thinking about it. “Goddamn science.” 

“Yeah,” he replies. 

“You’re lucky I like you, Banner.” 

He leans over her, combs a lock of hair out of her eyes. “I tell myself that everyday.” 

He reaches for the first padlock.

 

 

 

 

“Did you ever stop to think about what you actually want out of this, Tasha?” Clint asks, hunched over between rounds of sparring. 

There was a time when it was just the two of them, and Nat would have seen stopping to wipe sweat away as a sign of weakness, kept going until Clint collapsed with that dreamy grin on his face, knowing he’d lost to her once more. 

Such days no longer exist. 

“I thought I knew but now—”

“Don’t you dare blame it on some stupid nanobot sex pollen bullshit,” he says. 

Natasha leans down, wipes the sweat from her hands with an unused corner of his towel. “How can I have anything even remotely like a healthy relationship when sentences like that are a constant in our lives?” 

“I dunno, befriend some NYU Philosophy PH.D and get the courage to take your clothes off in front of Banner already?” 

She laughs at that, a wide and hearty sound she doesn’t allow herself to make often. 

“C’mon. Go with me again.” 

 

 

 

 

“Would you join me for dinner, Miss Romanova? I was thinking of breaking in my tangine.”

She should say no: she took Natanya’s ‘demure Russian mail-order wife’ routine on the road for a week and a half, and she’s barely past the point of unpacking and letting her grip on that catastrophe go. 

Maybe he can help.

They walk to the market just before rush hour starts. It’s gentle, companionable silence, netted bags frayed at their edges and no regard for personal space. 

“Blonde looks good on you,” he says as he picks up a head of garlic, slides it into his bag. She looks at him from across the produce stand. He stares like an old boyfriend, pondering how she got away. 

“I hate it,” She replies. She picks up a bell pepper, feels its firmness under her fingertips and tries not to remember the days she spent as someone’s dead-eyed slave. “They dyed my hair on purpose. It’s how they…” 

“Don’t,” he interrupts, eyes shining with understanding. “I don’t need to know. You could always dye it back.” 

She turns to him, “Would you help?” 

“If you wanted.” 

Bruce follows her into the henna aisle and tells her the story of how they traced the fog back to an old competitor of Stark Industries, and how he and Tony and Rhodes pulled a highly irresponsible caper as retribution, taking care of business while she was gone. 

“Did Fury sign off on that?” She asks, holding up two different shades of brown for his opinion. 

“Tony and Rhodey aren’t the kind of people who wait for anyone to sign off on anything even remotely looking like that,” he replies, tapping the darker color. “There wasn’t much to smash.” 

She smiles at that. “I’m sure they were grateful for the company.” 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he smirks. “But they did find the formula for the gamma manipulator. I’ve already started playing with the amounts, so I don’t have to worry about infecting or poisoning anyone casually.” 

“Was that something you were worried about?” 

“Not really, but the last thing I want is accidentally infect you.” 

There’s a blissful moment of quiet between them, standing there in the elevator, angled into each other. She leans in, rests her head on his shoulder, breathes the smell of him as his free hand slides around her waist. It should feel jarring, exposing. 

On the contrary: It feels like reprieve. 

 

 

 

 

She’s bending backwards into his kitchen sink.

“You could have done this yourself,” Bruce says. 

“It’s a two person job. Really.” 

“Listen to you,” he smiles down at her, lopsided and imperfect, “being all diplomatic. You just wanted a scalp massage.” 

“And what of it?” 

He runs bitten fingernails across her scalp. She licks her lips, bites back her purr. 

“I wasn’t lying, you know.” 

“About?” she asks. 

“What I told you when I was drugged out of my skull,” he says, nervously. She feels his hands clench, stop. “You’re the only person I trust like this. You’re the only person who’s afraid enough to be able to stop me if I…” 

“We’re not this way because of that,” she points out. 

“I don’t have to worry, with you,” he replies. “I know exactly where we are.” 

“And where are we?” She asks. “What’s the alternative?” 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re sort of terrifying. I don’t think I could stand being scared of you all the time,” he smiles. She opens her mouth to reply but he continues, “And I know it’s not like you aren’t showing me anything you don’t want me to see. You’re good like that.” 

She knows what he means. “I hate it.” 

“Yeah?” he asks. “It’s okay. Things will work out.” 

“Do you believe that?” she asks. 

“I didn’t say they’d work out in our favor.” The timer goes off. “Close your eyes so I can wash this out.” 

She covers her face. He turns the faucet on, working to get that last little bit of dye out, running his fingers through her hair, flicking the tangles out with sharp little tugs. “I had a dream about you a few nights ago.” 

“Really?” she asks over the sound of running water. 

He turns the water off, curls his fingers through her hair and stretches his arms in to squeeze her hair free of the water and the last of the dye. “I was teaching.”

She grabs the towel by his sink and hands it to him, looking at him pay attention to wrapping her hair as carefully as he could. “Yeah?” 

He nods, stands aside and lets her stand up. He walks away to the other side of the kitchen, peeling off his gloves and letting them fall into the garbage before refilling his wine glass from dinner. “I couldn’t tell you where but I had been teaching for a while, because I was going through a midterm review in a lecture hall full of undergrads. And you.” 

“And me,” she repeats, watching him sit on a chaise that’s been upholstered with the burlap of coffee sacks, carefully distressed so it doesn’t look as incredibly expensive as it likely was. He lays back on the chair, rolls the wine in his glass. “Was I one of your co-eds, Professor?” 

“That’s creepy,” he says. “You were the only person who was in the front row. You came in wearing a trenchcoat, opened it ten minutes into the lecture. You were naked, more naked than I’ve ever even seen you before. You put your fingers in your mouth, opened your legs and showed yourself to me, pressed your fingers right…” 

She watches him as he closes his eyes and raises the glass to his lips. She walks over, sits next to him. “Where?” 

His head hangs low, tongue peeking out to trace one last savory drop. “You know where. You touched yourself like you were the only person in the room. I couldn’t stop talking, but all I wanted to do was walk across the floor, kneel down and put my mouth on you while everyone watched us.” 

“Did you?” 

“I couldn’t, and you teased yourself for hours. You never came, just simply gathered yourself up into your coat when the class was over, and walked out with the rest of my students,” He says. 

She stretches out, gets rid of the towel. She takes the wine glass from his hand, places it down on the floor. She lays her lips on his, slides against him. She runs her hands down his body, to the sides of his hips, the small of his back. 

“You’re hard just thinking about it,” she teases. “What happened next?” 

“Nothing happened next. I woke up,” he says, pushing his hands around her waist, too. 

“Would you have let me have you, Doctor?” she asks, gently. “If I had come into your office after my show, gotten on my knees and asked politely for your cock in my mouth? If I would’ve sucked you down slow and drawn every ounce of pleasure I could out of you?” 

“I would be undeserving,” he replies. 

“Oh really?” She asks. “When’s the last time you’ve come?” 

“Eons,” he says. “That time with the fog. I can barely remember it.” 

“Bruce,” she says his name with false concern, “you’re overdue.” 

Her hand flicks at the button at the waistband of his jeans, fingers burrowing down to find his zipper, lead it down. 

She looks up at him as she reaches down and takes him in hand. “Now, would you look at that?” 

She weighs the consequences. 

 

 

 

 

Clint’s in the elevator, waggling his eyebrows as the door opens to her apartment. 

“We decided to wait,” she says, and it’s the best sentence in the English language. 

“Oh, come the _fuck_ on!” 

She’d be lying if she didn’t admit to finding Clint’s frustration on her behalf incredibly amusing. 

 

 

 

 

There’s menacing, foggy green wrapping around her like a blanket in the Nordic winter’s cold. She’s shivering, naked and tied to the pier in Bruce’s body, unprepared.

Then again, they were unprepared for everything. She was unprepared for the glass slide that came to represent Bruce’s intelligence as it shoved into the machine that would push her out to fit him in. 

She was unprepared for the too-tight space Bruce left behind for her to fit. She’d been unprepared for staring into her own blue eyes from where she was sitting, stuffed into Bruce’s body, unprepared to watch as they beat Bruce to a pulp so he’d talk, resorted to cattle prods and whips when he didn’t. She’d seen when the light drained from Bruce’s new eyes, when the dissociation kicked in, took him somewhere else inside her. She was thankful that she’d left it behind for him. 

When the goons were done, the Widow’s body looked savage, bloodied and torn-open-exposed and oh god, she didn’t even want to think as they’d pulled him away. 

“Take him and run, Nata,” her old voice whimpered out as they’d trotted Bruce’s new body from the room. 

All the leftovers, all the entrails, her hollow personality and false-flag memories and Bruce’s body and Hulk were cast outside, tied to the post, freezing to an ironic death. The anger coddles her, the fear and the pain like a dress of tears, a four-course meal of guilt. 

She’d done this to him, she’d elected to bring him, and now she was sitting here, his body discarded because nobody needed it. She tries to roll her hands in the rope, remember how limbs work. 

She tastes the bile in the back of his throat and wretches, wretches. 

Hulk stirs inside her, deep low rumbles of concern. 

“Please,” she says aloud. “I need you, please.” 

And she can feel Hulk stirring, surging into her, bleeding through her consciousness, and she’s fire and brimstone, and she’s hatred and indulgence and she’s going to _smash_ the people who have done this to them. She’ll grind their puny bodies into dust. 

She picks at the knot holding Bruce to the pier and gasps as they fall into the icy cold water. 

Hulk covers her eyes and takes it from there. 

 

 

 

 

“Romanoff,” Fury says as she watches Bruce walk her body away, hunched over in clothes he can’t hide his new form under. 

“Sir,” she says, snapping at attention.

“I assume you’re familiar with Banner’s situation,” he says, walking over to his file cabinet and opening a drawer, gloved hands pulling out a file. “Seeing as you’re in his head and all.” 

“Intimately, sir.” 

“Then do us all a favor,” he says, handing it to her. Bruce’s hand is clumsy, and she feels awkward as it closes around the thin stack. Her eyebrows furrow as she flicks it open. 

Thaddeus Ross. 

Hulk roars in the back of her head, beating at the barrier of her skin. Go, he tells her, go on and crush. She breathes deeply, urges him that she has this under control.

“It’s my job to know what goes on in my ranks, Agent,” he says with the gravitas of an Asgardian. “I’m willing to keep it off the books, if you want to help your friend.”

There’s a little extra emphasis on the word ‘friend’. 

She sounds so foreign to herself as she looks up and says. “It will be his hands doing the dirty work.” 

“Who knew you were such a romantic, Romanoff?” he replies. “Didn’t think you had it in you.” 

She might not, but Bruce does. 

 

 

 

 

Suddenly, the bamboo and touchy-feely overtones of the Stark Tower laundry room make sense. Bruce is clutching his bra and panties, the liner of the Widow suit. 

“You remember,” Natasha says, “that girl we saw on Halloween?” 

He wordlessly pulls his small hands out of the water, ice-pink palms and fingers curled into adorable claws. 

“I feel a little like her, inside your matryoshka,” she says. She drops her hulk-proofs in the sink, watches as undergarments mix. A kick of her hip shoves him aside and she washes everything in the bowl. 

“I’m so stupid,” Bruce hesitates. “I thought I could save you but you got all the good stuff and I was left with…” 

“My memories,” she answers, smiles sadly. “So now you know every inch.” 

He knows the waltz of all the people inside her head. He has Natalie and Natan and all the others wrapped around him for warmth in the cold of her circumstance: The people she’s killed, the personalities she’s built, the triggers, the rooms—all the rooms, all the blood, the red in her ledger, the reddened interior in the very shell of her, the husk. 

Bruce knows the man she loved for so desperately long, the man that slipped through her fingers. He knows the illusions that caused her to become who she was, the years of murder and torture. He knows how she saved herself. 

He knows once this relationship is over, Nata will buy a vintage pair of Chuck Taylors she can’t really afford and new rope she can knot and slip into her mouth as she masturbates months after they call it quits. 

He’s lived every inch, in the same way she feels like she’s lived every inch of his life down to the night his mother died, down to the first thought he had while meeting Elizabeth Ross. 

“Like a telephone pole knows all the layers of crap that have been pasted on top of it,” he says. “‘Oh yes,’ the pole says, ‘I would very much like to buy that record. Ooh, that movie looks really good! You know, I bet that concert will be nice, if only I had a friend to take along and maybe some legs.’” 

She laughs, squishes the water from her hulk-proofs and lets them fall into the other side of the basin. 

“I could draw a picture of you so thorough, it would make you sob just seeing it,” she says. 

“I know you could,” He murmurs. “I should go.” 

“No, stay,” she says, softly. “Please, Bruce. What’s wrong?” 

Her old lips purse together nervously. “I don’t deserve you.” 

“Why not?” 

“How could you stand me?” he asks. “How can we work after this?” 

“So we’re back to the beginning?” she asks. 

“No, but I can barely even control myself when I’m in that body and now, now you’re trapped and it’s my fault.” he looks away and turns, “I can’t even describe it. Just look at yourself, Natasha, look at me.” 

Widow’s face is cut and scarred, shoulders bruised under the strappy tank top Bruce wears. There are puncture wounds, and Natasha hopes that Bruce’s torment stopped there. 

“So you’ll just throw us away? We just stop because of something I get hazard pay for?” He breathes to speak but she keeps going, choked words pushed through teeth, “And what if this opened up a whole world of opportunity? All because you ‘hurt me?’” 

“Fury wants you to do something while wearing me?” 

“Something big,” Natasha nods. “Bruce.” 

Blue eyes look up at her, steeled with meaning. Bruce looks like the first time Natasha ever saw herself in the mirror. She sees what Bruce sees in her, now, simultaneously icy and searing with passion. 

She leans over, brushes their mouths together. Bruce shrugs her off, looking like he gets it now. 

“I want him to suffer,” Bruce growls low. “Give him a taste of the life he gave me. Make him beg, and scream and hope to god he can get out of your grip before you turn that mo-”

The Hulk roars inside her head, cheering. 

“Bruce.” 

He lifts his eyes to her as tears start to slide down his face, “turn my monster on him.” 

“And if I see Betty?” she asks. 

“Tell her the truth.” 

She gathers him up, wet hands staining his shirt, his skin. He hesitates, but buries his face in her neck. He burrows into her like she’s his favorite blanket. 

“I could let her know you want her back in your life,” Natasha adds. 

Bruce hides in her, and the moments stretch like hours between them. He’s weighing his options. She is, too. 

“You think that’s the truth, Natasha?” Bruce asks.

“Sometimes, I don’t know what truth is, anymore,” She lets her hands wrap around his hips, fingers spreading at the small of his back. He lets go in her. 

“I take you for granted,” he says, “god, I’m so sorry.” 

“You don’t,” she says, wiping at his tears. “And you were wrong.” 

He looks at her, “‘bout what?”

“You look really good in my catsuit.” 

He’s still sobbing, but it drags into a laugh. 

 

 

 

 

Bruce’s skin feels comfortable now, the Hulk resting gently in her lap all the time, the rage and fear always there. 

Ross opens the door. 

“It’s you,” he gasps. 

Natasha licks Bruce’s lips, powers up onto Bruce’s feet. She smiles, the smile of a monster, the boogie man, the spook standing by the door. 

“Is it?” 

 

 

 

 

“Artful work, Miss Romanov.” 

Hulk burrows against her, and she imagines placing a hand in his hair. She pulls Bruce’s lips into a smirk. 

“He deserved the best, sir.” 

Fury’s eye flicks up at her, and he raises his head. “And I suppose he got it.” 

 

 

 

 

Bruce has Natasha’s body all twisted in a knot when she finds it in his meditation room. His legs wrapped loosely behind his head, sitbones and open hips balancing on the mat, hands pressed together in prayer. 

She looks on. Her heartbeat pulses, the Hulk whimpers, her cock stirs. His eyes flick up at her, the corner of plush lips tugging into a smile. He’s watching her watching him in her body. 

“I fixed the terminal two days after you left,” he says. “Been waiting for you ever since.” 

“And this is how you wait?” she asks. 

“I didn’t want to risk dissociating by drumming up something from the past, and being an average woman of your perceived age is sort of boring,” he says. “So I spent a few days on this.” 

“Couldn’t keep your hands off me, could you?” she smiles.

“I held out for as long as I could.” 

She snorts as he presses lithe palms down into the mat, powers his body upward, until he’s almost floating, allowing his slender legs pop back into their original positions, toes digging into gum rubber. “I brought you back a trophy.” 

“Thanks for thinking of me,” he replies. “But I think you should keep it. I’ll get my souvenir the next time I can breeze through customs.”

“Would you…” she pauses. “Would you mind doing a favor for me, then?”

 

 

 

 

“So let me get this straight,” Clint says, flicking the pen over in his fingers. “The guy you are really, really into decides that he’s going to kill some time doing the yoga equivalent of making like Optimus Prime while you’re off slaying the dragon…” 

“I wouldn’t--” she starts. 

He stares her quiet, and continues, “and you walk in on him, mid-Viennese oyster, and you decided _against_ naked downward dog because you want your _body_ back?!” 

“It wasn’t all above board,” she smirks. “I made him dance.” 

Bruce played the part so well, muscle memory firming up scarred thighs and extending long arms, rising en pointe. He’d been lost in the lean of Hyppolyta’s pirouette, executing the endless jeté of a warrior goddess with the precision of a woman aching for that one last brass ring. And once he’d finished he’d raised his left hand, then his right, like a prima ballerina soaking up her acclaim. 

Natasha had put her hands on him then, order him to follow her lead. 

“Was he naked? Was it in your lap?!” Clint asks. “’Cause if not, you were missing the point.” 

She remembers the way he’d touched her with her own hands, the way he’d leaned into her, made himself pliable for her. She remembers the way he snarled as she opened him up, moaned as she pushed him. 

She scowls, “it wasn’t about sex.” 

“At this point, Nat,” he scoffs, uncapping the pen to scribble a number down, “everything’s about sex.” 

He pushes the paper over to her. 

“What’s this?” 

“The number to your on-call SHIELD existential counselor,” Clint says, “Darcy’s idea.” 

 

 

 

 

“Would you let me have something if I asked you for it?” she asks, sitting next to him on the subway.

“Depends on what it is,” he says simply. She puts his palm against the flat of her stomach, drags it lower. He gets the point quicker than she thought he would, almost pulls his hand away in shock. “And here I thought our stacking doll metaphor was psychological.” 

“It is, mostly,” she says. “But I can take inspiration if I so please.”

“Inspiration,” he says it like a dirty word. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was intrigued.”

“Intrigued is good,” She watches him cradle his hand and imagine. “You could make me wait.” 

“Good,” he nods, hair falling into his face. “I like watching you squirm.” 

Squirming is the heated glances she gives him at dinner, the little noises she makes during her post-mission exam, the way she holds her body. “Only for you.” 

“Only for me,” he repeats and kisses her until she can’t breathe. 

 

 

 

 

The rope rolls around her breasts, hitched up against her. He’s elegant, rhythmic: under, over, up-and-through. He finds each nipple, rubs so they stand against the starchy linen of his borrowed shirt on purpose, pulls at them as he wedges strips of shoelace between the ropes to hold them in place. 

“There,” he smiles, his hand coming to rest on her stomach, “gorgeous.”

She’s on her bed, breathing slowly and looking at him beside her, wearing hulk-proofs and a Culver College t-shirt like the adorable boyfriend in the movies Pepper always likes to watch. Natalya surges up in her for a moment, and she fights the temptation to spit in his face, call him capitalist scum. They kiss instead, even as he pushes one of her hands to the corners of the bed, snakes the rope around her wrist, through the loose fist of her fingers, down to the elbow of her arm. 

She rolls her bare legs against the column of his torso, “I forgot to shave.” 

“Makes two of us,” he smirks. 

He repeats the same process on her other arm, and Bruce ties the ends of the rig into her binding. 

“You’ll get out of it if you want,” he says. 

“And if I want this?” she asks. He puts his hands on her hips like they are his most prized possession. She opens her legs, and he fits into the space she’s left open for him. He leans in to kiss her and she arches into his touch. “Gamma?” 

Bruce’s mouth curves against hers, appreciating the sound of their safeword. They can begin, she thinks as he leans back out of the scope of her reach. 

He reaches down between them. The vibrator turns on, and he licks into her mouth, coaxing her open. She’s wet, itching to reach and the bite of the rope is so sweet against her wrist. 

The toy turns off. She moans without thinking. 

It flicks on again, kneading her until she’s at her edge. Her head tips back into the pillows, his mouth tracing over the exposed skin of her neck. He turns it off again. 

“C’mon,” she whines. 

“Nuh-uh,” he teases. 

He gets a pattern going, on and off until her whole body’s tense and burning. And every time he stops, he backs away, looks down at her, tracing his fingers against the outline of her vulva, swollen in her panties. His eyes pin her down.

The pleasure has begun to hurt.

He turns the vibrator back on leaves it for maddening counts at a speed too low to get her off and leaves her like that until she’s shaking, her everyday stoicism slipping through bound fingers. His brows furrow like he’s looking at a fresh set of readings.

“Bruce,” she says, her chest straining against his rope as she gasps for air. He pushes the vibrator even tighter against her and pulls it away right before she can come. “Bruce, please.” 

“Oh,” he smiles, softly mocking her. Anger crawls up her spine, swirling into her arousal. “There it is.” 

She bites her lower lip, plying herself still. The vibrator returns against her for a second, and he takes her chin in his free hand, mashes his mouth against hers. 

“Bruce, I need,” she gasps. 

“I like it when you act like this,” he smiles, like a villain launching into his philosophical monologue. “You always forget where you are, when we play. You forget that you asked me for this. You asked, Nata. Remember how you asked me?” 

The vibrator’s back in a flash at higher speed that makes her nod breathlessly. He traces the head over the creases of her hips, the curves of her thighs, the backs of her knees until she’s squealing. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t tried thighing your way out of this, yet, miss Master Assassin. Or is it Mistress Assassin? Oh, I think I like that,” He chuckles, raising the head to her trapped nipples, laughing as she yelps and squirms. 

She’s a sweating, degenerative mess, pouring every inch of control she has left into not coming, not falling over the edge. And he turns the toy off, places it next to her head as his fingers drop to the waistband of her panties. 

“May I?” 

Even now, so careful to give her a chance out. 

“Touch me. Please,” she demands, watching as his hand finally stretches her panties over her hips and pulls them down her legs. He manhandles her, shoves her around as he takes them off, throws them onto the pillow. 

He waits until she’s watching, then slides two fingers inside her, pumping them in and out. His fingers flick up quickly, snapping right into her G-spot. Her head snaps up and she gasps in blinding pleasure, her whole body responding.

He keeps going, building her up so high she hasn’t the chance to hide the tears rolling selfishly down her cheeks and mixing in with sweat, ruining makeup he’d told her not to wear. Even down to the sting of mascara in her eyes, she aches for him to press her pedal harder.

He watches her as he pulls his hand away, struggling and poisoned with desire, writhing against her own sheets for him. 

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs as he lays beside her, melting into the bed. 

“I am,” she confirms. She’s shaking in desperation, in embarrassment that she has to ask for the thing he’s holding just out of reach. 

“I have been spinning you up pretty high,” he muses. 

He carelessly reorients her hips until they’re facing him, and throws her leg over his hip, opening space between them so he can work. His fingers are calloused and rough and she shivers as he slides his fingers over her labia. She feels so small, the only part of her that matters right now fitting so easily into the palm of his hand. 

“I need,” She says, but can’t finish the sentence. She needs anything that’ll break the tension, even a little. 

“I’d let you come, y’know,” he whispers, “but you’ve been incredibly irresponsible, Natasha, you’ve let me get you so desperate. You should’ve never let me do this to you.” 

“You don’t know.” 

She’s worked past the jerking sobbing fit she had as she tried to hang on and failed. She wants to earn the orgasm he’s building for her. He sounds so concerned and she hates it, hates it when she gets treated like-- 

“But I do, Nata. I do, remember?” he soothes. “I know, so let me take care of you.”

He presses his lips to hers, kisses her fairy-tale slow and it’s the first time they’ve brought up the experience of being each other, but he hits every kink, so careful and observant as he peels back the sweat doused fringe of her hair from her eyes and kisses her like he’d gladly lose himself if he just had her. 

He reveals himself. 

“Bruce,” She says when she can find her voice again. “I need to come for you. Fuck me, I’m begging you.” 

“I could,” he brings his hand to his mouth, licks his fingers and uses them to slide against her, slide her clit out from its hood. 

He rolls his finger against her in slow, gentle circles. She leans her hips into his hand. He holds her close as she shivers against him, tries to get his hand to traverse lower. His free hand takes her bound one, fingers linking together. 

“Make me,” she gasps. "Please, Bruce, don't force me to beg like this." 

“Shh,” he says, “be patient. It’ll come to you.” 

She tries to bite back her moan as he keeps going, even-handed and intimate and unfair, so very unfair. She pulls at the ropes, still weakened and trapped, so reminiscent of the pier, and lifts her eyes to Bruce’s once more. He’s watching her carefully, like a lover, so touch-starved and lovelorn that she would give anything to share this feeling with him. 

And then it hits her, the first wave of convulsion crashing against her. She bites her lips not to make the sound she knows he wants. 

“There you are. Show me, Nata,” He asks, his hand backing away as he extracts his whole body away from hers. She’s alone now, trembling and empty, goddamn him. “You’re so good to me, you know that?” 

She opens her mouth and rolls her hips over, open, her head leaning forward as she feels herself fall endlessly and he reaches for her, grabs and wraps her hair in one hand, his other hand between her splayed legs. 

“Take me.” He orders. 

He folds his fingers together and adds even, equal pressure as he presses the tips of his fingers into her. He doesn’t add force but doesn’t give her room to escape as he sinks deeper, deeper, until she’s gasping, stretching around his knuckles, making room for the sides of his hand. She’s pulling at the ropes, bucking and bearing down on him until he’s wrist deep, staring down at her. She’s flying, allowing herself to enjoy the way he fills her, the way his fingers spread out. He runs a finger over the most private place inside her, and she shudders at the feeling. 

He reaches for the vibrator, letting her head fall back onto the pillow as he lifts her from the inside, like she’s nothing around him. He makes her present herself, feet flat and crotch up as he returns the head to her swollen clit, orgasm given to her once and twice more, clenching against his palm, his knuckles, spreading herself around his wrist. 

He tires of the vibrator and lowers his mouth to her, like he’s eating the ripest fruit on the planet. She leans her feet on his shoulders and tries hurriedly to slip his knots. 

With a little focus, one hand pulls free and in an instant, she unties the other. He moans as her fingers reach into his hair, curls his hand into a leaden fist pushed right against where she needs it most. 

She curls up in pleasure as he keeps going, takes the advantage, pulls her deeper into orgasm, her come rolling down his wrist.

“Yes, that’s it,” he coaxes. “I’ve got you.” 

He pulls her closer to him and she surprises herself with how the building pressure explodes inside her and then she’s ejaculating all over him, dousing him. She keeps her hold on come-wet hair and wraps her thighs around his neck as she rides out the convulsions, tries not to lose her mind. 

He looks up at her, pupils pulled open with vulgar arousal and a mouth swollen red, drenched in comingling sweat and come. His hand becomes a throbbing oversized object inside her body, her ball and chain. 

She moans, pushing her hips back on his hand and leaning down to take his mouth. She can taste herself everywhere, and kisses him until she’s ready to pass out. 

“Jesus,” she groans. “I can’t. I can’t--”

“It’s okay,” he assures, mouth pressed against hers, his free hand winding fingers into one of hers. He stretches her back out again, soft and flat against the bed. “You did so good. You’re so good for me. Just one last thing and you can rest, okay?”

She stares up at him, at the ceiling. “Wait, wait.” 

He nods as she catches her breath, as she rolls her hips and feels the weight of him inside her. She fucks herself on him slowly, weak shoves of give and take. 

He touches every place inside her and she shows him how it feels, lets him see it on her face. As he pulls away, she allows her mouth to open, her breath to hitch and bend around a moan higher pitched than the rest. 

She feels empty, shivering and clenching and coming again, helpless. 

 

 

 

 

“Ooh, so what happened then?” Clint asks, leaning his chin forward into his hands. 

“There was a point when he was taking care of me where I don’t think he knew where we were,” she says. “I’ve never seen drop like that before.” 

It’s true: he’d knelt at her feet and untied the ropes, cleaned the makeup from the lines of her face so carefully. He’d prepared a fitful dinner, fed it to her on his knees, and then offered to blindfold himself as he bathed her, eyes averted like she’d been in control the whole time, like he’d been serving a volatile goddess. 

She pulled him into her oversized tub, poured him a cup of tea. She bathed him, and after she’d bent him against the tub and leaned down, used her mouth to lick him open, flick her fingers in until he was begging her to _don’t make me come, please, please._

“And then?” 

She’d drained the tub and drained him until he had nothing left to give her. 

“And then we watched some Space Ghost reruns on my couch. He introduced me to Hanna Barbera a few weeks ago,” she shrugs. “Both of us were a little burnt out by then.” 

“You know,” Clint replies, “I’m just gonna have to fuck him if the two of you are going to keep dancing around the obvious issue like this. Flirt with him when I leave, let it marinate. Seal the deal when I come back. Good plan, don’t you think?” 

“I like dancing around the issue,” she doesn’t take his bait. “Banner’s a good dance partner.” 

“I never underestimated his ability to swing,” Clint says, “but you two have already proven he won’t go all irrational rage monster. So you’re really just being mean to each other, now.” 

Her brows furrow. “I don’t see how that’s an issue, frankly.” 

 

 

 

 

Bruce Banner is a terrible actor. 

“Mistress assassin, while you may know what’s in my head,” he says, the corners of his mouth rebellious in the way they tamp down on laughter. He almost breaks as he takes his glasses off, “my adamantium safe-room is not your private dungeon.” 

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, dropping her coat to reveal the black vinyl catsuit and shoes she still thinks are impractical. Her hair’s styled appropriately, licking at her shoulders. “You don’t think you could make an exception?” 

“How very Emma Peel,” he says, and reaches out to kiss her.

She slides a gloved hand to his crotch. It makes a sickening sound against his chinos, like the crunch of a garbage bag and neither of them can stand it anymore. After the laughing fit, she ends up on the couch in a pair of his hulk-proofs and a t-shirt for a band she’s never heard of, watching old episodes of the Avengers with him on his couch. 

“Roleplay’s firmly off our list.” 

“Firmly.” 

20 minutes later her head’s in his lap, her mouth’s on his cock and he’s screaming her praises for drawing it out, longer, longer. And she pulls away, wrestling him down, discarding his boxers and displaying her pussy, leaning her legs against his arms, threatening to push herself up into his face. 

“Gimmie,” he dares her. 

She carefully draws the bead of her clit against the swell of his bottom lip, “Do you deserve it?” 

“No,” he croons, “I don’t, _Mistress Assassin_. I’m completely unworthy.” 

She laughs and orients herself so she covers him, the curves of her ankles like shackles around his wrists. She spears herself open on his tongue, watching his hips shove against nothingness, and she sits forward, dragging against the cleft of his nose to blow against the head of his erection. He jostles against her, groans into her cunt and she sits back onto him, picking up the remote to unpause the episode. 

He moans again and she shushes him, although it turns out the Avengers are terrible spies. 

“You know,” she says conversationally even though he’s good at this game, “That title doesn’t conjugate the way you think it does. And even if it did, it sounds terrible.” 

He moans his response. 

She decides not to come. 

 

 

 

 

“I asked my existential counselor, this time, seeing as you’re on the books,” she says, cheerfully. “She thinks making the decision to mutually withhold sexual intercourse is smart. Also, she used the word ‘adorable.’” 

Hearing Clint’s garbled mess of frustrated ire is even more amusing on the phone. 

 

 

 

 

“Alright, cavalry’s arrived,” Bruce says. “What are you doing to your hai--”

“Giving myself a haircut, what does it look like?” 

“Oh-kay,” he says. “So…am I here to help?” 

“I need your hands,” she interrupts. He holds them up, and she presses her binder into them “Help me put this on.” 

“Nata, what’s going on?” he asks, as he slides it over her shoulders, starts tugging it down. 

“Clint’s deep cover mission went south,” she says. 

“Isn’t that what SHIELD’s for?” 

“SHIELD’s full of incompetent half-cocked cleanup men when it comes to extractions this high-risk,” she spits. 

“I will totally take your word for it,” he replies. 

“I need to get there before they do,” she says as he finally leverages one of her breasts under the compression shirt. “He was posing as legal…” 

“Don’t tell me anymore, I don’t want to be trouble for you when Fury comes around,” he interrupts. “Is this shirt supposed to be so tight?” 

“It pushes my breasts down,” she replies. “The only cover that fits with Clint’s in this mission requires me to present myself as male.” 

There is a moment’s pause, but then Bruce nods at her in the mirror. “Hope you won’t mind my getting rough.” 

“Not at all, Doc,” she says as he uses all the force he can muster to tug the rest of the shirt down evenly, her chest composed into a flat line. She shimmies into the shorts, watching in the mirror as they reshape her. She’s still lithe, but without the Rubenesque hips and thighs Natanya and Natalya spent so much time relying upon when she was younger. “Thanks.” 

“Not a problem.” He replies as he holds open the shirt she’d picked out, helps her slink one arm into it, and then the other. She buttons it, walks back into the closet.

“You might need to perform some basic handler duties while I’m gone,” she continues, checking each gun twice, shimmying into a pair of Clint’s old jeans. 

The Stark Phone chirps as it reaches full charge, and she sends a document to Bruce’s phone. She flicks the tie around her neck, pulling a loose Windsor like it’s nothing. Bruce watches as she pulls on a motorcycle jacket, pulls out a helmet unlike the one she normally likes to use, drops her guns into the bag. 

“Don’t look,” she says, as she cowers in the corner and pushes the last piece into place in her jeans. 

“Trust me when I say I have literally no clue what’s going on,” he says. “So if I’m playing handler, does that mean you get to go around being a badass and I get to do the paperwork?”

“I’ll do the paperwork when I get back,” she says, walking past him. “I just need you to watch the news, and call the numbers I just sent you to reinstate some things. It’s all on your phone. I’m going to DC, so that gives you about four hours to make sure everything’s active. I’d do it myself, but I’m in a bit of a pinch.” 

“And far be it for me to stand by and watch when it comes to your work,” he adds. 

“Especially when it might get a little wet,” She smiles. “Call the phone if anything goes to shit.”

She reaches for the scissors, stares at herself in the mirror and cuts, cuts, shakes it all out. It’s little more masculine than before, and she can get a better cut when she’s where she needs to be. 

“Nata,” he says, standing behind her. “I know this is what you do but seriously, you’re flying without a net, here.” 

She plucks the contacts case off the table and puts the lenses in. The silence stretches as she closes her eyes, and blue transforms into brown. 

“It’s Natan,” she corrects, voice a little husky, the tone a little too deep, her accent a little brisk. Natan stands different than the women Natasha has let Bruce see, his legs farther apart, his shoulders modeled after the way Clint used to hold himself back when they were enemies.

“It doesn’t matter who you are as long as you come back,” he says and leans down, kisses like bittersweet goodbye. 

 

 

 

 

It’s two and a half weeks undercover, working Natan’s foreign charm up through the ranks of the defense council. Natan’s hands stay in his suit pockets, and he curses under his breath in Hebrew every time he has to take a taxi because there’s too much salt on the roads to use the bike. He pushes Natasha down, keeps careful count of how many people look twice when he passes them by, how many people are blunt and knowing and rude. 

His paralegal never asks, seems to not really care. She is an interesting young woman, reminiscent of a messier Natalie. He can see the pain in her eyes as the woman speaks of her lover. Natan would know that look anywhere: someone is blackmailing her.

He gets into the habit of taking her to lunch on slow days in the office. 

His phone rings in the middle of their conversation, and something tells him that this is worth answering. A soft apology and a careful finger flicks the Stark star across the screen. He holds the phone to his ear. 

It’s Bruce, his voice quiet, “we found Barton.” 

Natan makes a passive sound. 

“Come in from the cold, my love.” 

The woman across the table from him is picking at her salad, lovelorn. Natan picks up on it, rolls it over in his head and leans into the phone. “I know it’s been hard. Just a little while longer, okay?” 

Bruce stays quiet on the other side of the line. Here’s hoping Fury is not on speakerphone. 

“Might I call you back?” a pause, the imaginary outline of a response. “Tonight, so we can plan for New Years? Good. I love you.” 

He puts the phone down and picks up his glass of too-sugary lemonade. 

“So,” the woman says. “New years.” 

Natan feels his face heating up. Caught. Vulnerable. “I feel bad about leaving so abruptly.” 

“What’s her name?” 

“Bruce.” he stammers, letting it sink in truthfully. “Law school was rough, and he was going through med school and I don’t even know how it happened, really.” 

The woman sighs, looks down for an awkward moment into her salad. “Must be nice to have someone who loves you like that. Do you miss him?” 

Natan smiles a little wistfully, overcome with sudden emotion. “I said I wouldn’t let myself,” he says. “But you have no idea how much I do.” 

It’s only a little bit of a lie. 

The paralegal spends days asking Natan of his affair with Bruce, and he doesn’t mind exposing it to her, trickle by trickle over shared lunch, bit by bit at happy hour. ‘We met abroad’ and ‘I think he saved my life’ and ‘I wouldn’t mind if he were the last person I kissed.’ And even as he steals reams of classified data from the council through his access at the office, Natan doesn’t get burned or even flagged, thanks to that woman, living vicariously through an Israeli ex-pat accidentally in love with a man.

“It’s so romantic,” she crows, sometimes. “It’s like it took you by surprise!” 

Natan’s mouth curves to the side in thought, a carefully crafted refrain in this song. “Yes. I suppose it did.” 

 

 

 

 

Bruce is sitting on top of Clint’s desk in the joke of an office Clint shares with Natasha at the Bowery. He’s hunched over in his SHIELD uniform, with its obnoxious diagonal zippers and unfortunately placed thigh holsters. 

“Thought you could use a break from all that paperwork,” he says, holding up two empanadas from the eatery across the street, wrapped primly in tin foil. 

“I’m not done,” Natan says, and it rings with double and triple meaning. To go back to Natasha now would mean losing valuable data. Bruce looks at them, nods. “But a beer couldn’t hurt.” 

“I didn’t think so,” Bruce smiles as Natan closes the door, walks over to the mini fridge and pulls out two yeunglings off a six pack that’s been in there for months. “I could hear Fury going at it from down the hall…”

“It definitely wasn’t pretty,” Natan replies, walking over to take the foil packet on top but Bruce pulls it away, reaches a questioning hand around Natan’s middle. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” Bruce says. 

“I am, too,” he nods, and leans until Bruce has made space for him and they’re body to body. He runs his fingers through Bruce’s mad scientist hair, and lowers his mouth to Bruce’s for a kiss. They grind together, their mouths opening to exhale together. Bruce reaches down between them, running curious fingers over what he finds. Natan bets they could do this all night, and it hurts to separate. 

“Bet you’re starving,” Bruce hands him a packet, and opening the one he has left like he’s ravenous. 

“I have to tell you something.” 

“Shoot,” Bruce replies. 

“I told someone about you,” Natan says, peeling back the tin foil, swirling red sauce carefully so he doesn’t have to watch Bruce watch him. “An asset, a person I needed to keep me safe. I told her I was in love.” 

“With me,” Bruce says, taking the bottle.

“With you,” Natan replies. He turns around, leans against the desk beside Bruce, almost touching but not quite. 

“You did what you needed to do,” Bruce shrugs. 

“But…” 

“Isn’t love for children?” Bruce asks, reaching down for his beer. 

“I don’t actually believe that,” Natan replies, and his voice lilts like Natasha’s. “Children can’t comprehend the sort of decisions love forces on its victims.” 

“Hmm,” Bruce says. “Even when you’re terrified of me?” 

“Especially,” Natan corrects, and pops open his can. “And I’m still scared of him, because I can’t explain him, not even after all of this.” 

“I don’t know what it is, but ever since we switched,” Bruce hesitates, flicks his free hand up to play with his glasses. “I’m worried that you don’t think this is worth it. And you’re just trying to find the right combination and put on the right mask, and then you’ll take me out. So, let’s just say we’re fond of each other and call it a day.” 

“Hulk wouldn’t let that happen,” Natan says. 

“Wouldn’t you count on that?” Bruce asks. 

“I can’t…” he stops, sighs. “Intimacy isn’t really my drug of choice, Banner.” 

“Interesting choice of words.”

Natan nods. “Y’know, people don’t seem to enjoy my company when I’m arranged like this. Like they know I’m hiding something, even if they don’t know what it is.” 

“People are weary of complicated things,” Bruce shrugs, puts his head down and looks like he’s on the verge of blushing. “Then again, we aren’t so different, you and I.” 

 

 

 

 

Clint’s sitting in a SHIELD medical bed with every limb in a cast. When Nat visits him, he is still very unpleased, “And you didn’t let Natan fuck him last night?! He left for New Zealand today!” 

 

 

 

 

“Tea?” Bruce asks. 

It’s deep, snowy December: Christmas is this week and the City has bought into the hype, a red and green cascade from every street corner.

“Yes, please,” she says as she walks over to his couch, listens to the way the burlap squeaks as she sits down. “Jetsons or the Banana Splits tonight?” 

“Surprise me,” he smiles. She does, old Jonny Quest on the television as they doze, curled up into each other. 

Hadji’s making Bandit levitate when she turns to Bruce, “it’s time to stop pretending.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Her hand drags lazily against his neck, her thumb tracing his lips. His beard is fuller, his lips candy pink in contrast to dark brown facial hair. 

“I want to see your bedroom.” 

Bruce leans back, readjusts his glasses and looks at her. “You’ve been saving that request for a long time, right? Because you wanted to be sure you wanted what would happen once you were there.”

“Yes,” she says. She unbuttons her shirt and pushes it off her shoulders.

“Are you sure of it now?” 

“Bruce,” she warns, “Stop looking at me like that. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.” 

“That’s not true,” he says, softly. “I made a point not to look before.” 

And suddenly she wants to be naked. “You’ve been waiting.” 

“It’s been a very satisfying wait,” he says. Groups of soldiers shoot a crudely drawn metal spider on the screen. He grinds against her, a long stroke of his hips. He takes the hand reaching for his mouth and presses a kiss to her palm before venturing to the place where her jaw meets her neck, and then to her ear. “I would wait longer, I would do it in a heartbeat.” 

“You don’t squirm as well as I do,” she smiles. 

“You could teach me, later,” he says and holds her tighter, pushes every bit of himself against her. “Would you walk into my parlor, Miss Romanova?” 

She turns to recapture his mouth and wiggles from her leggings at the same time, laying against burlap like it will turn into silk if she just looks good on it. “If you stand back and look.”

He flicks on a lamp and follows her orders. She doesn’t pose, just lays out naked for his eyes. 

“You could touch me,” she says, “any way you want.” 

He skims the backs of his fingers down her torso, traces the long swoop of each rib, broken and reset too many times to count. He leans down, pushing his mouth against her breast. She exhales shaky breath as he slides his tongue against her nipple. 

“Take me to bed, Bruce.” 

“If you promise not to laugh.” 

Banner’s bedroom really is worth a laugh as she stands in the doorway blissfully naked. He leans down, chuckles as he slides his mouth against her shoulder. 

“Still want in?” he asks. She can hear the fidgety embarrassment and disbelief in his voice. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” she replies. “You know I’ve had sex in places much more opulent than this.” 

“Opulent, I like that word. This room is _opulent_ ,” he says, testing out the sound as he tugs her inside, stripping down like there’s something to hide. “But most of the time, you did kill the guy.” 

The truth is, Banner’s bedroom is tiny compared to the rest of his space. After they close the door, it’s no bigger than her bathroom. It would be the first room she’s seen in this tower that’s appropriate for a man living alone, if it weren’t for the fact that Stark made Bruce an indoor rainforest. She looks behind them to see the walls covered in vertical gardens of moss and vine, flowers peeking out with colors electric pink and orange. 

“So this is why we never played in here,” she smiles. “You were worried I’d eventually get so sick of it I’d go Black Widow?” 

“It’s not even my fault,” he says. “My landlord just tends to miss the point when it comes to interior decorating or world travel.”

Light falls over the room like dusk, and Bruce leads her to the clearing in the hatch of palm trees and banana leaf plants creating a barrier around the bed. 

The bed looks sunken into the floor like a clearing. A pile of blankets are on the other side of the too-big surface, from the gossamer thin to bulky woven wool, things she’d expect to see in his pack as he bummed his way around the world. She sits on her knees at the foot of the bed, looks in the other direction to see the lights of some New York office building through the trees. 

“I’m mostly just confused,” she chuckles, wiggling up the bed and laying back, spreading herself out. There are flowers and moss here, too, lining the sides of the bed as leafy plants distract from night stands and electric sockets. “And I think the fact you put up with it is sort of cute.” 

“It’s the nicest bed I’ve ever had, even if it’s one big, sort of offensive contradiction,” he smiles. “And now that you’re in it, it’s even nicer.” 

“Always is,” she smirks, stretching out even further. 

“You remember what I said to you, that one time? Tension, Miss Romanov.” 

“Romanova, if you’re going to use it like that.” 

He starts at her toes, tracing his mouth up the stubble of her legs, the bend of her knees. 

“Nothing you don’t want,” he runs idle lips and the pads of his fingers over her thighs, rolling a leg up into the hip so he can address the raised scars of her skin. He carefully avoids all the places that would light her on fire, opting for the soft curve of her stomach and the jut of her breastbone, the curve of her shoulder, all the places on her arms he’s never considered his to touch. 

“I would like it if you fucked me, Bruce,” she says. 

“So would I,” he says, reaching for something on the night stand. He bites the corner of the condom wrapper, pulls it open with his teeth. 

“You don’t need that,” she says, the words spilling uncontrollably from her mouth. “My body lacks reproductive functions, and my blood was engineered to guarantee I don’t get sick.” 

He pauses, “so I should treat you as a weapon instead of a woman?” 

It’s a terrible question, it should ruin their night. Stupid girl, she thinks. 

“Most men do, when they now what I am but I…” she searches for the words, she’s never had to go this slow before. “I didn’t mean it that way.” 

“Would you help me find your trigger, if I did?” he interrupts. “Would you turn your safety off for me?” 

She stares up at him and he looks down at her, just as intense. 

“Planning on shooting up the place, Banner?” she asks. 

He leans his head down against her stomach like he’s listening to her blood as it rushes under her skin. 

“I’m considering,” he replies. 

He unrolls his tongue against her, flattens it out to cradle the curve of her. He drags slowly against her clit. It’s not enough pressure, a tickling graze of warm, soft breath. He teases at her gently until she has nothing left to do but shake, so very close if only there were that one last piece, if only he’d forgive her for begging him for it. 

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he says as he leaves her hanging, sits back and prepares himself. “I’m old fashioned, even when it comes to finely calibrated instruments like you.” 

She reaches down for an errant stroke against herself. His fingers wrap into her hand, pulls it up from her crotch as he drapes her over him, almost there, almost at her entrance, his body heat pouring over her. Her eyes soften and she moans as he leans his head down, carrying his lips against the valley of her breasts. 

“May I?” he asks. 

“Why do you still ask?” he’s face to face with her now, running his lips over her jaw. “Isn’t it obvious by now?” 

“I suppose it is.” 

And he pushes in, a never-ending stretch. She gasps at how he fills her, groans at the weight of him inside. Her body closes up around him, her legs twining around his hips, her hands rolling into his hair. He stops, leans down to take her mouth. 

“Please,” she gasps when he refuses to move. “Bruce, don’t do this.”

“Don’t what?” he moves slowly, hips leveraged at just the right angle with a soft, kind sway. 

“You’re going to make love to me,” she says like she dreads it. If she’s honest with herself, she has so many reasons to dread it, the things that happen in the middle of it. 

“You make it sound so cruel,” he observes. “I’m not going to be cruel to you.” 

They kiss again, harder this time. He shoves his hips to put pressure on her clit, and she itches for him as he pushes her down onto the mattress. He rolls his whole body up to her, through her, his rhythm steady with halfhearted stabs of pinpointed pleasure. 

And he’s looking, looking down at her so openly that it hurts. She can’t hide in her shroud of persona, not like this. She can’t prove, demand he please her. So she goes in the other direction, lets her control recede for a whimper here and a hitch of breath there. She’s naked: terribly, blissfully naked. 

“Shh,” he says, because it still looks like an act. He pushes his hips backward and finds something within himself that pushes him into her hard enough to make her moan, leans his mouth down on her neck and drags his tongue against her collarbone. She tilts her head back, exposes her neck and tries to calm down, find some way not to show she’s been utterly poisoned with him. 

He slows down, losing focus, and lets his fingers pull at her chin until she’s angled into his mouth in a sloppy kiss. They aren’t breathing together. They aren’t gazing long into each other’s eyes. The low light in the room does nothing. It’s quiet, but not delicate. 

And yet, the inclination to dissociate isn’t there. No, she’s shackled to her body, and she feels the edges of her fraying, unraveling for him. 

Her hips lift, finally willing to participate as her nails drag down his back. Her mouth slackens, like she’s about to say something between ragged breaths and bitten-back moans. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, and she’s felt it a million times before, the tickle of body hair and the clash of hipbones but something’s not quite right. 

“Bruce,” she says. “Bruce, please, I need you to…” 

Hold me down, she wants to say but he’s already pulling himself away, coaxing himself free from her grip, sliding backward on the sheets. 

“Not even if you ask politely,” he says. “C’mere, Natasha.” 

She rolls over onto her hands and knees, crawls to him, pushes him flat back on the bed. 

“Careful what you wish for,” she says, and doesn’t bother with making it look good for him. No, legs pulled into an inelegant squat, verticals and diagonals framing the valley of her cunt. She reaches down and slots him back into her, finishes the picture, everything leading back to where he stretches her open. 

He’s left to watch as she fucks herself on him. She looks down at him, pleases herself harder, deeper, isn’t kind and he’s got no leverage, hips pinned against the bed, her plaything, a toy she sucks the pleasure out of until there’s nothing left. She brings her hips down flush, watches him heave as his whole body aches for more of her. She teases him, rolls out a parade of tricks she bets he didn’t even know existed. 

“Nata,” he groans, and she stops in her tracks, quirks up her lip. 

“I know it hurts, baby,” she croons, makes it sound like he’s weak for being dragged so easily to the edge, “poor little thing, I know you need to come so bad. I know you’re getting impatient, I can feel you throbbing inside me and I know it’s killing you but let me have it one more time, Bruce, please?” 

She doesn’t give him room to answer, just raises herself off him and slides back down as slow as she can, watching as his hands grip the sheets and his lip wedges between his teeth. 

She moans, lowers her knees and sits forward and takes his hands, pushes them toward her breasts. “I know, sweetheart. I just need to feel it slip out one more time.” 

She goes so slow, rolling her hips until there’s nothing but the head inside her, and she pushes her hand down and strokes her clit back and forth until she’s leaning on his chest because she’s inches away from coming. 

“Nata, please,” he strains to say, shivering and breathless against her. “I need a minute, let me…” 

She slides off him completely, sits back in the open space between his legs. It takes everything she has not to stroke herself off, but the urge feels hollow, mean. 

He’s watching her fingers curl up and move away from her crotch and when she turns away to settle herself down, he chides. “No hiding.” 

He leans over, traces her lips with a slick finger before sliding just inside her. 

“Should I?” she asks. “I could. Just like this.” 

“I’d like to see how you look when you force yourself to break apart,” he nods and she lets her body take over and leans back as she falls headlong into the pleasure of an unintended orgasm. She crawls backward and opens her body up for him. He goes with her, slides a second finger inside her and holds her as she shivers from the shock. 

“I don’t even know how to describe how hot that is,” he grins. “And you can just…do that on command?” 

“Don’t get any ideas.” She says, razor sharp and cutting through the middle of him as she reaches up and kisses him and rolls his lip between her teeth. “I should let you come, shouldn’t I?” 

“That would be really nice, yeah,” he says. 

She bets he can see her eyes gone soft with pleasure, he’s looking at the plump outline of her mouth. He slides his hands down against her backside, they come to rest on the swell of her ass and she reaches down, pushes them off him to back away. 

“Turn around,” he says, his chest heaving.

“Why should I?” she asks.

“So I can fuck you the way I’ve been dreaming about.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Trust me?” 

She runs a hand through her hair and rolls over onto hands and knees, muttering playfully. “Fat chance.” 

He looks at her, runs a casual hand across the underside of her foot, a casual touch that tickles the arch. Her whole body clenches for a decadent moment in another aftershock. 

He pulls away from her, comes close and pushes in so hard and fast she has to reach into the dirt to get a good grip on something stable. And then everything lines up, the way he fills her, the way he holds her so carefully around the hips and thighs. He’s grunting behind her, a steady rhythm she can follow and he’s brushing against the space inside her that he’s only ever touched once before, that makes her feel so full and ready and uncomfortably hollow at the same time. 

“Bruce,” she gasps. 

“Give it a second, I swear,” he grunts. “God, you’re so tight and good and I’m gonna…” 

“How long has it been?” she asks. 

“Months,” he gasps, grabbing her, holding her close and burying is face in her hair, thrusting up, up until he’s exhaling against her shoulder, fingers shaking to turn her head. She’s grabbing handfuls of the soil, trembling along with the way he throbs inside her. 

He holds her close and buries his face in her hair, thrusting up, up until he’s exhaling against her shoulder, fingers shaking and pushing and creating new bruises as he fills the condom, fills her up. 

“C’mon,” he coaxes, “Open your legs a little wider.” 

“How’re you…” she starts. 

“Gamma manipulators, mostly,” he says, like it explains everything. He backs away, pulls himself out until she’s empty and cold, halfway to another orgasm that she knows she can’t wrap her mouth around asking for. “Turn over. Hands back in the dirt.” 

“This the part when you think I’ll do what you say and be a good little girl?” she asks. 

“That would assume there was a time in your life where you were a ‘good little girl,’ Nata. We both know that’s not true,” he says, “I just want to switch this condom out and fuck you until you come hard enough to scream.” 

“Tall order,” she comments, but she does as he asks, turns around and positions herself with her hands in the soil under one of the trees, stretches and submerges all her fingers. 

He crawls back to her, skimming over the swells of her carefully placed thighs, looking down at her. He lifts a hand to her mouth, and she licks gently at the fingers, sucking them in. He slides back in, and she bites down gently, just a little pull to show how much she appreciates him. 

His free hand arranges her legs, and he uses the leverage he has to piston in her so slow she moans when he’s finally all the way inside her. 

“Karma,” he smiles, and extracts himself just as slow. 

“How?” she asks as he pulls his hand away. “How’re you…” 

“Oh, that’s a story for another time,” he says as he pistons in and out of her like waves crashing against the beach, the high tide rolling in. He tucks his wet fingers against her clit and keeps them there, doesn’t even bother to stroke. 

“C’mon,” she whines. 

“Nope,” he shakes his head. “Work for it.” 

“God, you’re so mean,” she says, trying to hide the cracks in her voice and the way she’s starting to tremble like she’s cold. 

“Like you’d want me any other way,” he teases. And he keeps going slow, slow until she’s making all the noises she’d usually hide, trembling on every stroke, fighting so very hard to keep her eyes open and her hands where they are, raised in surrender over her head. “You make all the best noises.” 

“Fuck you,” she bites. 

“We already did, remember?” he laughs. “Your turn.” 

He starts rubbing against her clit, back and forth in time with his too-long thrusts that run right through her. Her breath is ragged and soaked through, warm with them, with him. 

“Nata,” he whispers. “You deserve it. Stop fighting.” 

She’s shivering with newfound pleasure in every turn and twist, and she voices it like it makes her sick. She spreads her toes and tries to find the strength to push back against him. He pushes in all the way, the two of them tied at the hip and he raises his free hand to tweak at a nipple casually before running nails down the surface of her torso. 

“C’mon.” 

Natasha’s hands grow useless, and she can’t get her mouth to work. She’s so ready for him, for this, for what they do and he watches as she tips her head back and lets him speed up until it’s merciless, ruthless. She clenches down on him, comes so hard it requires her to ease her head back and voice her pleasure aloud.

Too bad she can’t find her voice for that.

She looks up at him, convulsing in surrender, and he’s flushed with adrenaline and the finest sheen of victory. He leans down to kiss her again. 

“So,” he says.

“So,” she parrots. Her hands are caked in dirt moistened through with sweat, not quite mud. He takes her hands one by one, cleans them with a water bottle she hadn’t even realized was laying near her in the bed. 

“I’ve figured you out,” he murmurs. 

“Yeah?” 

He bites his lip and nods. “Yup. Got you pegged.” 

“How’s the Hulk?” she traces his calf with a toe, a girlish concession for Natalie’s sake. 

“Very not angry,” he shrugs. “Hungry, though.” 

She weighs that, “I could use a snack before we go for round two, I suppose. As long as we promise each other--” 

“I want you up against one of the gardens, next time, if you’re willing to roll around in some moss,” he grins. “But I won’t bother coming if you won’t.” 

“Look at you,” she laughs, “reading my mind already.” 

 

 

 

 

It’s snowing outside his window in the pale morning light. A blizzard that will melt in the afternoon sun, she thinks, how poetic. His hand reaches out to trace her arm. 

“Hey.” 

She looks over her shoulder, “hey.” 

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, rolling over in the other direction for his glasses. 

“How Maria keeps asking me to take a vacation,” she says. “I might take her up on it.” 

“Might,” Bruce asks, thinly. She can hear him groping for his glasses, so he can fit them to his face. 

“It might be nice to get out for a while,” she says. “Maybe I’ll go the next time you leave.” 

“Damnit Jim, you’re a spy,” he jokes, “not an aid worker.” 

“Not you with the Star Trek, too.” 

“I was the one who got Clint started on it in the first place,” he smiles, his lips dragging across against the naked plane of her shoulder. She feels the itch to pull away but decides it’s not worth it, not when what she wants is right here. 

“What are you doing until the new year?” She asks. “We could go somewhere for the holiday.” 

“I already promised Tony that we’d spend Christmas and New Years at the tower. He’s throwing a New Years Eve party, apparently.” 

“We?” 

“The Hulk and I.” 

She rolls over into his arms. “We could be a ‘we.’” 

“We could, if ‘we’ wanted,” he says. “A loose ‘we,’ we’re not very tight people.” 

“You weren’t saying that last night,” she smiles as she arches up, sneaks a good morning kiss. 

“We’d have to convince us,” he teases. “We’ll have to lay out a compelling argument.”

She makes a noise at that, “we are a bit incompatible, at times. We shouldn’t be worried, though. We can be incredibly persuasive.” 

“We can be,” he replies, leaning into her. His hand reaches down between her legs, biting his lip when he feels just how wet she is, how she fits into his hand. “May we?” 

“What do you think?” she asks, and pushes the opened condom wrapper into his hand. 

 

 

 

 

“You got mega-laid!” Clint’s got both his legs propped up in the wheelchair, but he still whoops like he’s about to start dancing in relief. 

“If you have to be so crass.” 

“Was it like a screen door in a hurricane or…” 

“No, no,” she nods, remembering the morning spent in bed with Bruce, tossing tumbling cooperation and pleasure spiraling from every pore. Exploration and frustration two sides of the same coin. “More like playing with a really nice gun.” 

“And what was the caliber, if we’re going there?” Clint’s eyebrows raise. 

She stares and knows Natan and Natanya would think it unladylike to kiss and tell but Nat crinkles up her nose and gossips anyway. 

“There’s a very good chance that it’s the only part of him that doesn’t shrink back.” 

Clint’s squawk is too birdlike not to laugh at. 

 

 

 

 

“How do we feel about rope for New Years Eve, spice up our party?” 

“Hmm, thrill of getting caught.” She says, smiling inwardly as she looks up at Bruce over their drinks in their too-ostentatious booth. “How provocative.” 

Bruce just shrugs, flicking his fingers over the rim of a Whiskey Ginger in a chichi glass. “It is black tie.” 

“We reserve the right to take that request literally. And if we decided to have a little private time in the middle of the fray?” she asks, leaning over the illuminated table. “Some more exploring, perhaps?” 

His brows furrow, and he readjusts his glasses for a moment once he gets with the program. “You wouldn’t dare.” 

“Who said anything about a dare?” she asks, reaching over to trace the line of his beard, “it’s mine, and we could share it, as long as we weren’t obvious. Timed it right. Planned it out.” 

And he looks at her, lifts his glass to his lips. “How very Emma Peel.” 

“That’s not like Emma Peel at all!” she squeals, and allows Nata to bicker, because this is her contentment. This- her complicated city on another empty Friday night-- is Nata’s home. 

 

 

 

 

“Man, I totally would have been happy with Dick goddamn Clarke’s,” she mutters, “stupid pop Rockin’ Eve and being naked on my couch.”

“It’s Ryan Seacrest now,” Bruce murmurs. She flutters her muscles around him and he gasps a little, shifts against her and listens as she moans, softly. “God, I love it when you make those noises.” 

The party has been incredibly boring for being black tie: small enough where they really should have kept it casual, but Stark demands black tie anyway. It’s worse off now, as it slides into the awkward eleventh hour, when the group’s milling about, talking almost drunken nonsense.

“You just want to get us caught,” she smiles. 

“Like you haven’t been proving you wouldn’t let that happen all night. How many people figured it out?” he asks. 

She knows that nobody can tell a thing, not the way his tux is cut, not the way he’s substituted rope for ribbon on the parts of her body that are exposed by her almost-too racy dress. She’s gone without underwear, as Bruce carefully roped her up so her breasts look full and free-floating, her hips and thighs well drawn and shaped. She looked voluptuous in every sense of the word.

“Just one. Stark was taking a picture of Rhodes and I together and I crowded in a little too close. He felt your knot,” she replies. 

And since, they’d been working this room of Starks’ assorted friends and emotional stock holders, dancing around each other all tied up, fleeting glances and gently twitching fingers. Every movement pulls at the knot of rope resting on her clit. She’d made a point to hug each guest and once the liquor started flowing, sit on the lap of every person who would have her, a con artist building up for her grand finale. 

“Which one.” He asks. 

“Left shoulder,” she replies.

He plucks at a ribbon and she gasps into her champagne glass, the knot at her clit drawing tight against her. Bruce thrusts up into her a little harder this time. “Punishment.” 

“If I would have known you’d punish me if I got caught, I would have taken our favorite military man aside and shown him every inch of your very best work. I think he would have taken a concerted interest,” She goads, rolling her hips in millimeters, clenching against him. Bruce smirks, turning the thought over in his head. 

She crosses her legs politely when she sees Colonel Rhodes looking, smiles gently and licks her lips. 

“He’s curious, you should’ve. What do you think he would do if he knew what he was watching, Nata?” Bruce whispers in her ear. “If he knew what we were doing? Where you were keeping me?” 

“Don’t tell me,” she deadpans, “he’d be shocked by how much of a dirty little girl I am?” 

“I’d accuse you of watching too much porn,” he says, “but ‘m not sure when you would possibly find the time.”

She laughs, shakes her head. “He’d come over and offer to help finish the job, I bet.”

“Mmm, I like that idea,” he admits. 

“Oh, really? I’m intrigued,” she asks, a little surprised. “Everyone else who had the gall to hug me thought I was wearing a holster.” 

Tony comes around to make sure everyone’s glass is filled, looks at them and lifts his glass in approval. 

She turns to Bruce and asks him, “Do you ever want to just…” 

“Run?” he asks. “Sometimes. I find some place to go, where there are helpful things I can do. And when they’re done, I give myself a break.” 

“Would you have me, the next time you get the feeling?” she says, softly. “I’d take vacation. You can teach me how to campaign for sainthood.” 

His eyebrows raise as he reaches for his glass of whiskey. “So, you want it to be _Saint_ Mistress Assassin.” 

“Bruce,” she says, “that’s easily the pulpiest thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

“You’d fit right into a 1970s sexsploitation film,” he says. “But you probably wouldn’t last very long.” 

She shoves at him, chuckling under her breath. Most everyone who buys into the tradition is waiting for 11:59 standing in front of the windows as if they can magically see Times Square from here. 

“Would you like me to get up?” she asks. “You’re going to miss it.” 

“What,” he says, “the ball drop?” 

“Yeah,” she says. 

“Never really seen the point in it, honestly,” he says, wrapping his arms around her as people start turning their backs to face the window. He leans in, smells the Jasmine and Gardenia perfume he handmade her for Christmas, kisses the slim column of her neck. “The new year comes even if the lights don’t work.” 

The group is counting down backward from a 60 in the warmth of the commons, and she realizes she doesn’t really care if anyone sees, not really. Wouldn’t mind it if she screamed out loud, told everyone who dared to ask the truth of this. 

“I have a surprise for you,” he says, and reaches down gently to turn the ring on, a low buzz hidden under the terrible music blasting from the speakers. For a moment, she lets her emotions show on her face, torrential pleasure jolting, overwhelming. “I know, Nata, I know.” 

42, now. 

“Could…could we come?” she asks. 

38\. 

“Oh yes,” he says, sagely. “Spook like you? I bet you could come hard and I wouldn’t even be the wiser.” 

“Sweet talker,” she smiles. 

31, 30, 29.

“I’m closer than I thought,” she replies, tries not to give them away.

“I’ve been all day,” he replies. “No thanks to you.” 

20, 19, 18. 

“Can we hold out until midnight?” 

15,14.

“If you kiss me,” he asks. 

She smiles, swings her hair around like she’s drunk, hides the two of them. 

9, 8, 7. 

“I’m going to come all over you.” She warns. 

Time slows down and he holds her close, slips his hand into her hair and rubs lovingly at the back of her neck, and they grind against each other, each move choreographed to look like they’re both trying to get comfortable when that’s the last thing on either of their minds. 

“Put your champagne down,” he insists. “You don’t want to break the glass.” 

She turns, tearing new pleasure from the change in position. He’s right where he needs to be, now, turning her into a wildfire under her dress. 

“But Bruce,” she teases. “How else will you know if I’ve come?” 

He laughs. She switches hands and takes a swig. 

2.

She lays her head on his shoulder. From afar, they look like they’ve both drank too much, almost asleep on each other. 

“What a difference a year makes,” he muses. 

Bruce’s ropes finally work their magic as she rolls her hips against him, lets the head of him sway inside her as ribbon tugs and turns. She can feel a million caresses with every twist of her body. His fingers clench against her hip and she knows he feels it too.

1.

She screams. 

He turns her face toward him and indulges in his New Year’s kiss. 

Even as they hang on for what feels like forever, the champagne in her glass barely even moves.

**Author's Note:**

> A matryoshka doll (also known as Russian nesting/nested doll) refers to a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The dolls are constructed from a single block of wood, cut in halves. Traditionally the outer layer is female, but the figures inside may be of any gender.


End file.
